It is very hard to imagine how George Osborne could have delivered more injustice in one announcement than he did yesterday.
What he announced was that anyone who had invested in a pension fund but who had not drawn down all that fund to pay a pension at the time of their death could now have their estate withdraw that money from that pension fund tax free and then pass it on to their heirs, also entirely tax free without any inheritance tax applying.
In principle what this means is that a person with ample spare income or wealth can now put money into a pension fund and get tax relief on it at their highest marginal tax rate (which means up to a 45% rebate) and then leave that money accumulating in that fund tax free until it reaches a ceiling of £1.25 million, at which time it can then be left until they die, at which time there is no tax on exit, offering considerable savings, and no inheritance tax either, the latter saving at least 40% in many such cases.
What Osborne has therefore created, as the FT confirms, is the most perfect tax free way for the wealthy to not only pass money between generations but to actually claim a tax subsidy whilst doing so. The result is quite staggering. This is triple non-taxation for the wealthy, and you can only presume that was his intended outcome.
The evidence that this government is promoting the trickle up of wealth in this country has been accumulating over time, but this has to be one of the most blatant exercises to encourage that ever presented by a government in this country. It really is staggering.
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As Polly Toynbee points out in her latest piece in The Guardian, one of the results of the UKIP threat to the possibility of another Tory government is that its given the Tory right the excuse that they’ve always wanted to plough ever more rightward. As she says – and as many of us have known for a long, long time – to people like Osborne, Gove, May, Cameron etc. etc, (the list is long and ugly) this is their meat and drink. The moment in history they’ve been waiting for, everything Eton, Oxbridge and their elite educations prepared them for. Everything their parents, who had to endure an age of social democracy and citizens sharing in the wealth of this country resented so much, can now, finally, be undone. Back to the golden age of the 19th and early 20th century. Back to Downton Abbey, and Upstairs, Downstairs. Back to privilege and patronage. Back to the poor, sick and thus undeserving stuck away in their hovels, out of sight of the rich and righteous. Back to when the middle classes knew their place: when teachers, doctors, clergymen (and now women), solicitors, etc, were beholden to our “betters” – the truly wealthy and thus deserving – for our positions, livelihoods and wellbeing.
One would think that such a rampant right wing Tory Party would result in an emboldened Labour Party. But no. What we have instead is a a party whose leadership and advisers think its more important that their leader – and potential future Prime Minister – speaks without notes – as if anyone in the real world is impressed by that. A disgrace that if we’re not careful is going to deliver a Tory UKIP government next May.
I agree with all of that
Especially on Labour, who have a massive culpability right now on all aspects of policy failure
Unhappily for all these ‘back to’ ambitions, I don’t believe this particular genie will be going back in the bottle. People won’t have it.
Bill- I think the signs are that people will take it, sadly. The narrative of:
1) bashing the ill, vulnerable and poor
2) Encouraging rent seeking through land/property
3) Keeping wages low and debt high.
4) Humouring those in debt peonage and telling them they are ‘doing the right thing’.
I think that this culture of fear is winning out with the middle classes cringing and cowering lest the crumbs from the tables of the rich no longer reach them. As Chris Hedges has written in the ‘Death of the Liberal Class’, the middle class were once the guardians of social value. The danger, as Hedges writes is that:
”
“It fights for nothing. It stands for nothing. It is a useless appendage to the corporate state. It exists not to make possible incremental or piecemeal reform, as it originally did in a functional capitalist democracy; instead it has devolved into an instrument of personal vanity, burnishing the hollow morality of its adherents.”
Once the middle class get scared they will lose what they have -they will ditch social justice. Combine this with media induced narcolepsy and no political representation (Labour!!) we have plenty to worry about. The right have it all on a plate.
All true but the middle class are due to lose what they have. When that happens and they discover they’re the new working class then they’ll revolt. Tick tock… 🙂
Ivan and Richard (and all the others who have posted on this thread),
Two observations: first, I share your frustration with Labour’s timidity, when faced with open (not just slightly open, but Irish Sea width open) goals. If EVER there was a time to re-run 1945’s “We’ve won the War. Now let’s win the peace”, with the adoption of a TRULY radical manifesto for the 21st century, as the 1945 manifesto met the needs ofcthw mid-20th century, that time is NOW. I won’t bother to particularise this – readers and supporters of this Blog know what I have in mind. I stay in the Labour Party, having resigned before, when the Party left me rather than the other way round, in the hope of making my small contribution to leading the Party to take that radical route, and adopt e.g. Green Party policies (many of which are, ironically) popular with UKIP rank and file members).
My second point concerns those “poor, dumb bastards” in the middle class, who were quite happy to jeer and hoot and app laud when it was the so-called “scroungers and skivers” and alleged “fake disabled Benefit junkies” from the despised untermenschen of the underclass who were getting a thrashing, when they never cottoned on they they were next, and that the neo-feudal project ALWAYS had it in mind to reward (VERY handsomely, I might say), those who counted as “one of us”, with everyone else – including the old middle-class – to be reduced to serfdom and debt-peonage, shouldering ALL the costs of society, but enjoying NONE of its rights and privileges. They aren’t even PBI – poor bloody infantry – more like sacrificial victims to be cast beneath the wheels for the neo-liberal Juggernaut. Perhaps they may, at last, be waking up to the reality , but a truly radical Labour Party manifesto and campaign could mightily assist them in waking up to reality. We can only hope, and carry on pressurising Labour to be REALLY bold. If not – goodbye civilised Britain.
I sense your ANGER
And it is justified
I am baffled by Labour but am told they must triangulate still and appeal only to the floating voter who they think swing all elections
This is absurd. They are ignoring the fact that maybe 30% of all voters won’t vote because they are offered nothing by party’s like Labour
I hope Labour’s policy makers are reading this Blog. WAKE UP!
Richard, your blog and the intelligent debate it provokes is a breath of much needed fresh air.
Thank you
Labour do read this blog, I know
Labour may read this blog but they are rabbits paralyzed by the highlights.
¨Unfortunately, the polling I have already done in individual seats, starting with the most marginal, shows the Tories already behind in 24. This includes Brighton Kemptown, Enfield North and Hastings & Rye, three of the more defensive Conservative seats I am looking at in the round of research which is currently in the field. And the current national polls, as well as the overall swings in the Conservative-Labour battleground I have found so far, suggests the number of losses could extend to the point where Labour have a comfortable working majority¨
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2014/09/told-tories-birmingham/
Look again at Election date minus 6 months.
The party ahead then has a 7:1 chance of winning the election.
All this presupposes that Miliband E discovers some cojones…things are not looking good on that. He, currently, is trying to be all things to all people.
JohnM, I looked at the reports from Ashcroft’s polling. They may be accurate. But I have no doubt whatsoever, that despite the denials from both the Tory Party and UKIP, in the last few months before next May – lets say about February for arguments sake – a deal will be done which at least attempts to engineer the best possible result for both of them. That may not be enough to keep Labour from forming a government, but given what we know of Cameron and co, and what we’ve seen these past few days, they will sell their souls twice over to the Devil to remain in power (once they’ve already done whilst in government since 2010). And as I have no doubt that Farage’s thirst for publicity and influence is no less than that of the Lib Dems in 2010, and his interest in actual policy making appears to be zilch, a free ride into government on the coattails of the Tories will be an opportunity not to be missed.
I buy that
Money seems to confer power in this materialistic world and sadly the Labour front bench appears terrified of confronting the global elites. Inequality is the outcome but there is no moral dimension to the establishment. George Osbourne is ideologically intent on destroying everything that was achieved in the 20th century that improved life chances for the masses. Like the USA the introduction of massive university fees is degrading education and eventually as middle class jobs are downgraded the value of a degree for ordinary people will disappear. The Labour Party is deaf to the feelings of it’s grassroots. I implore the Unions to carefully consider whether it deserves support or whether the Green Party, which does have a socialist manifesto, should be the 2lst century party for the people.
The Labour Party must be getting a bit twitchy, they’ve let the conservative coalition set the agenda, taken the blame for the recession,provided an ineffectual frontman to kick about and done everything they can to alienate anyone with half a brain….and their ahead in the polls?
They must be tearing their hair out right now. It’s not supposed to work this way, David’s still moving and shaking in the US. They might have to renationalise the NHS!
I wonder what the betting’s like on Edmund making way for Chukah Ummah to lead them into the next election, because right now it looks far too close for comfort.
Read Ashcroft’s findings
The price of inequality
Professor Danny Dorling, interviewed on the BBC’s HARDTalk programme this month argues for a revolution against society’s richest 1% and highlights the corrosive effect on society of widening inequality.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026kfnr
Dorling is absolutely right! Badawi’s bland and ignorant line of questioning is all too typical of a BBC supporting the neo-liberal ‘norm’.
If Labour are elected, Ed Balls as Chancellor has already announced a freeze on child benefit, a cap on ‘welfare’, and further cuts to public spending, with the aim of achieving a budget surplus by 2019-20, the end of the next Parliament. Furthermore, they are committed to spend £80-100 billion on the Trident nuclear missile & submarine replacement, and cut VAT. Even the 50p top rate of income tax and the mansion tax will not pay for that AND increased spending (£2.5 billion) on the NHS! Their sums simply don’t add up, especially when the house-building programme they propose is also taken into account.
Labour are addicted to austerity, and are as much a part, these days, of the neoliberal consensus as UKIP, the Tories and the LibDems. I had to laugh yesterday when I read an article in the New Statesman by Simon Heffer, of the MailOnline, describing it as a ‘centre left’ consensus (to be fair, _his_ version excluded UKIP). Heaven help us if we ever got to his idea of a centre RIGHT one!
If anyone on the Left wants a genuinely socialist party, committed to greater economic and social equality, and to renationalising the public utilities, as well as to ecologically sound policies on renewable energy, the environment and climate change, then they should join, and vote, Green.
Something I suggested some time ago. However, I’ve changed my mind as I believe if the Greens ever look like making a showing they’ll immediately be overrun with Tory faux green fifth columnists a la New Labour. I can’t see the answer to all this being political. Scary, eh? Who here wants to run the country? I don’t for one.
I would if I had to
I’m not offering though
There are some ‘Tory faux-green 5th columnists’ (they call themselves ‘Kiwi’, & claim they are championing the ‘greenness of the Green Party’ against people like me, who belong to Green Left UK), but there is no danger of them ‘overrunning the Green Party’, believe me Bill. They will only do that over my cold, dead body. No-one believes the Tory ‘vote Blue get Green’, hug-a-huskie, propaganda now, not after Nigel Lawson, Owen Paterson and Cameron’s reference to ‘green crap’.
As for the answer being political: no, not _party_ political, but political in a much broader and more inclusive sense. The sort of sense that I saw only the other night, as an entire local community battled to try and keep a day care facility for the elderly (the last one in Wellingborough, Glamis Hall) open in the face of Tory Council cuts. People of (nearly) all parties _and none_ united and fighting for the same objective. That is a vision of the future of politics in this country. If we are to avoid any number of nightmare scenarios, it has to be.