The election has been, and gone. I am aware many already regret their decision on how to vote.
The budget has been and gone — and as is now readily apparent, the richest in our community will lose just 0.6% of their income a year as a result, and the poorest 2.6% plus untold cost in other, as yet uncalculated, benefits lost. Many more will be regretting they way they voted soon.
And what is to come? At last 4 million unemployed. With that a housing slump,negative equity, a possible banking crisis, business failures as customers vanish, and a rapid decent into chaos for public services as they struggle to meet demand with demoralised, underpaid and hopelessly overstretched staff.
With that will come political chaos. The ConDem coalition will not survive these strains. Some will join the Tories — Clegg among them. But it won’t be long before the first Lib Dem MP will cross the floor of the House and more will follow. The chance of a five year term is very, very low indeed. No government has ever delivered more than two years of cuts in spending in UK history. This government plans to do it continually. It is a recipe for its own failing — and of disaster for the rest of us.
And what of Labour? I wish I had confidence in the leadership candidates. The bets — Jon Crudsas - is not standing. Of the rest I have to choose Ed Miliband. His brother has not got over New Labour — and it is dead. Balls is unelectable. Burnham, is an “also ran”. Ed Miliband has some green credentials, displayed some real ability in Copenhagen last year in a massively difficult environment, and has shown willing to move on.
That is what is needed now. That is what I plan to make the focus here now. Of course there will be current issues to highlight. And there are big campaigning issues to take forward — the need to challenge secrecy jurisdictions, the need for country-by-country reporting, the necessity of tax reform — including the need for a General Anti-avoidance Provision and a review of the domicile rules — both of which are in the plans for this government at Lib Dem request, informed in the past by my work. The need to tackle poverty remains paramount.
But there’s something more top take on now. There’s the need for a new narrative for reform. The Left needs this now. The old mantras don’t work. And there are new targets to tackle. These include renewed emphasis on the tax gap and what causes it, and how better taxes could really transform our economic and social prospects. Ain that process new issues need to be taken on: limited liability and what it means in practice is one. The administration of companies by the state another.
In all of this there is a pressing need: the need for an alternative to the dire scenario the ConDems are building. The need in short for a scenario of hope.
That’s what next. As the UK economy faces the biggest crisis it may have ever known over the coming years this is what progressive thinkers need to concentrate on — creating an alternative to the prescription of the failed economics of the neoliberal marketeers.
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The terrible thing is how much damge will be done meantime and whether the opposition candidates can release themselves from the gambler’s fallacy of their own, exteremely limited ideologies.
As yet, I don’t see much apart from promising to do the same things in a ‘nicer’ way.
Richard, could you show and explain how you get to your 0.6% and 2.6% figures?
Richard… isn’t the obvious solutions to the benefits trap to increase the minimum wage to a living wage?
Why don’t the LP candidates go back to some first principles… like the proper redistribution of wealth?
@ Syzygy, maybe the candidates realise such a principle is about as likely to get them elected as coming out as supporting the poll tax?
Maybe people who’ve worked hard to earn a nice living would resent it being redistributed to people who don’t share the same work ethic?
But don’t you see Greg, why doesn’t someone share the same work ethic?
Are we all different?
Doesn’t make you an —ist?
That’s where this social democratic angle is coming from. Everyone should have the same opportunities.
By having legislation, and further; by allowing jurisdictions that allow regimes that distort the disparity of “being successful”, and worse, corrupt the whole global pattern of wealth distribution: all data that is widely available, to exist, is completely contrary to liberty and democracy.
By arguing against it, especially because the data is pouring out of thinktanks, NGOs, academics and decent people, it makes any argument against it look sociopathic.
Did it work in the ’80s?
I was there
and the 90s
I was there
I saw the social destruction.
There can be no argument against a softer approach to a problem that was mainly caused by fat idiots who care nothing for anyone.
ffs
against all my principles, i was in the City, and then Guernsey.
My detractors can laugh all they like.
I know what happens. Your laughing makes you look so stupid. I hope the Guernsey readers are taking note.
@Greg
Greg
When we are talking about a living wage, we are talking about people who are working hard but are barely getting paid enough to live on. Are you comfortable with being seen as an advocate of sweat shops. A “living wage” is by definition being paid to workers. This isn’t even a discussion about those on benefits. What planet are you on, mate?
Try reading some serious material about social inequality like “The Spirit Level” and then come back and start talking.
@Syzygy
And what exactly is proper distribution of wealth? Perhaps you would care to elaborate?
/This comment has been deleted. It failed the moderation policy noted here. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/comments/. The editor’s decision on this matter is final.
Anything negative about Murphy’s has to be deleted?
Presumably Murphy is the editor with the final decision?
This comment has been deleted. It failed the moderation policy noted here. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/comments/. The editor’s decision on this matter is final.
@Eric Grobb
Yes
Should I delete my own comment, or will you let this one stand? The supposition in your criticism of the budget cuts is that everything was fine and dandy, which it clearly wasn’t. With a deficit of 10-12-15% (pick whichever number fits your argument), and tax revenues at an all time high in recent years, there just isn’t enough juice in the private sector to pay any more, so the last government tried to create an illusion of continued growth by borrowing and pushing money into the public sector, which was first of all unaffordable and secondly blatantly immoral in that it relied on future generations to pick up one third of the bill for today’s public services.
@Alex
See
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/06/27/have-no-doubt-about-it-the-private-sector-is-going-to-be-battered-by-condem-cuts-and-the-result-will-be-recession/
Your analysis is hopelessly inadequate
The private sector has been in effective decline since 2003. If government spending was stripped oaway, then even after leaving in the stimulus of PFI, private sector activity per capita has been in decline in real terms for the last 7 years. This was papered over by the Labour government who used uneconomic spending to cover up what should have been a much earlier fall in GDP. Any recession in the next year will be a correction to get our economy back towards the situation where the government only spends close to an amount that it collects in taxes, and conly collects in taxes so much that it leaves the country a suitable place for investment, both points that the last government ignored.
@Alex
If the private sector has been in decline during a boom what hope it can do anything for us now?
The reality is, as I argue here, http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/06/27/have-no-doubt-about-it-the-private-sector-is-going-to-be-battered-by-condem-cuts-and-the-result-will-be-recession/, that the private sector has nothing to offer that people want instead of the services the state supplies
That’s why you’re so fundamentally wrong
Where are these “sweatshops”? Sources please. (Please note, this thread is all about the UK, not the developing world where it’s indesputable that such places exist).
And maybe you should read some previous posts to see the “benefits trap” was mentioned.