Interviewed by Robert Peston this morning Theresa May said the Conservatives have no plans to increase taxes, and claimed Labour had. However, when asked to reiterate the tax triple lock brought in by David Cameron, covering national insurance, income tax and VAT May only ruled out increasing VAT. The ambiguities are obvious, not least because Labour has already committed to no VAT or NIC increases.
But what's really bizarre is the claim, which may well haunt her.
The country is running a deficit, which she says she is committed to removing (even if that is a meaningless and harmful target). And the deficit will get worse after Brexit, if that is not already happening. Having a worse trade deal with our biggest trading partner pretty much guarantees that, and that is what we'll get on top of having to pay a lot to secure that outcome.
What is more the tax system is far from perfect and is in need of reform: rates can be in that mix.
But what is being said is that despite all this taxes are off the agenda. The single biggest tool the government has to shape the society we live in is apparently ruled out of consideration, come what may. What that means is four things.
Government won't be shaping society.
The gross imbalances in favour of a few will continue.
And austerity is guaranteed.
Social division follows, naturally.
That's what May said this morning. And she wants to be Prime Minister.
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I totally agree with everything you have said. It can only mean more hardship.
But all I see around me are people wanting to pay less or no tax everywhere.
The link between tax and shared wealth for everyone has been broken for many by mendacity and cowardice.
The scene is set and the drama must now be played out.
In recent decades the UK government has ceded control of most, perhaps almost all, sectors of the economy and parts of government and national assets. Thereby it must attend to the needs and demands of those who have taken over these controls. The consequences are as you describe. None of the rabble we have to choose from on 8 June will be able to do much. Worse, they will not want to do much because their interests are other than in the UK.
Corporation taxes lower and no VAT increase, come on. VAT is the Tories tax of choice to increase; it hurts and generates the most destruction of money for the poorest.
BTW I could not bare to listen to Mother T on TV.
I’m off canvassing for the local elections. Yes and Labour are running scared of the polls with politicians coming to the Greens for help [deals]! I had to remind my MP that Greens are radical and bottom up, a couple of us could not decide a deal for my local party we had to go back for a democratic decision.
What’s very worrying is the number of traditional labour voters who will be conned by the Lynton Crosby clever sound-bite ‘strong and stable leadership in the national interest’ and vote Tory. May said this morning that it will be the most important election in her life-time, and she’s right but for all the wrong reasons. ‘Make America great again’, ‘Take back control’ – have we really reached this nadir in political campaigning when a single headline is sufficient to sway the electorate? It’s annoyingly difficult to avoid clichés but there’s precious little one can do when turkeys en masse vote for Christmsas.
John D-I think it was you I(possibly someone else) said after the last election it was a case of ‘turkeys voting for Christmas whilst stuffing the paxo up their own posteriors. Only a deep analysis of the sociopathology of our society can explain why people en masse are voting for a party that will deny them: affordable housing, social care, training for their kids, cheaper energy, job creation for infrastructure -and all because of a union jack wave, a power dressing but vacuous PM and a press that has demolished a man as ‘untrendy’ because he hasn’t sold himself on spin and photo shopped selfhood.
As Richard alludes to above, a deficit is NEITHER good nor bad, it depends on the overall economic picture and we KNOW that a Government cutting a deficit when the private sector is in debt and there is a trade deficit = scorched earth (except for the wealthy with assets). May talked about Labour ‘bankrupting’ the country when this is impossible with a currency issuing Government -Labour should have shoved a video of Alan Greenspan saying this in May’s face, for heaven’s sake even Trump said this (mind you he said everything and meant nothing).
John D when I thing the nadir has been sunk to, I find another trap door opens to reveal even greater depth of mendacity, superficiality and dumbed-down bunkum.
The many voters who will be voting against their own best interests will do so for a number of reasons:
1) A Labour party that abandoned many of them a long time ago to chase Tory swing voters instead. And has now abandoned them again so that it can have a big sulk with itself over its leadership. And just as Labour succeeded in making itself Tory to get those swing voters, we had the biggest financial disaster ever in 2008. So as a result when the voter was probably in the mood for something different (left wing perhaps?) it practically had two main parties that looked the same!!
2) Because they have been lied to by the Tories often enough to believe in what they say.
3) Because they do not trust Labour anymore because the Tories (and Labour being too passive) have convinced them that Labour bankrupted the nation.
4) Because they have been actively encouraged to think of other issues as important rather than key things like the economy from which their attention is being diverted. A 30 year old colleague told me that he would vote Labour now because Corbyn had backed down over Trident. Never mind the fact that the Tories will probably chuck him out of his public sector job in the next 5 years!!
5) Because they are being made to be scared and do not know who to trust.
6) Because they are being mercilessly manipulated by vested interests.
7) Because our dysfunctional and undemocratic FPTP voting system denies them the opportunity to be heard or represented properly.
If you look carefully at this list you will note that from a causal point of view, all these factors are things being done to the voter and may well impact voting decisions.
I think our voters are basically OK. Its our rotten corrupt and self serving establishment (the rich, the media, politics, our faux democracy) that is the problem.
I have a faint hope that the lady’s cliches may backfire. On Have I Got News for You, the jokes about the cliches were already starting. The more the cliches are repaeated, and the more people make fun of them, the sillier she will appear. Just a hope.
It was quite funny!
Recommended watching for those who did not see it
Junior doctors’ Facebook has a photo of a funeral directors shop front named “STRONG & STABLE”.* All I can add is Mother T is taking us to the grave.
* Maybe a photoshop?
Even if a photoshop, good work
Yes, a particularly entertaining edition of Have I Got News.
For me it sparked an image of all the Daleks scuttling around squawking ‘strong and stable, strong and stable…’!
Interspersed with ‘exterminate the saboteurs’ perhaps
Lol
As Cameron used to say
Derek says
your views are too pessimistic, another person as commented how the system conspires to deter people not only voting but to vote for parties that promise to cut standards of living while making the few very wealthy. During the EU referendum the Brexiteers always made sure to counter the warnings of leaving the EU by using common sense. For example trade would still continue with the EU because we need their products and likewise their need ours.
In a similar way parties should not only make promises but counter the nonsense that the Tories come out with,remember in 1945 everyone predicted that Mr Churchill would win easily. Instead the people ignored the nonsense the Tories came out with, their remembered the hardships of the past,their saw how government could be used to win a war and their believed it could also be used to create a better society.That is what parties need to do get the people to believe again in the ability to change society rather than accept things as they are. And if no one believes it can’t be done then look at how the SNP as changed things in Scotland,
Derek
I don’t think Government has been shaping policy for a long time, it just seems to aquiesce to the desires of the rentier class, bankers and corporations,
these imbalances that favour the few are not new but become starker and appear more gross as the conditions for the many deteriorate,
austerity is guaranteed, as much by the fact that the West’s dominance has peaked as globalisation spreads the pie across the nations of the world, coupled with the end of the era of cheap fossil fuels,
austerity would be more tolerable for the masses if the golden few who have harnessed a particular form of globilization to serve their personal needs were actually touched by austerity,
social division is not a problem if it has no voice in the mass media, malcontents can be branded ‘terrorists’ and you can live in a gated community, travel by helicopter and yacht and have your own personal security detail,
VAT makes me uncomfortable, am I right in saying it was 1.5% when it was introduced as a temporary measure in the 1970’s?
these days the corporate lobby seems to think corporation tax should be abolished and all taxation moved onto the consumer in the form of VAT
it is only the truly basic neccesities that are VAT exempt, most of the 5% rate items could be considered neccesities these days, gas, electricity, womens sanitary products… I mean… lets get real about this,
pretty much everything else is hit by 20%,
is there an argument for a progressive VAT rate, full exemption for neccesities, a marginal rate for the modest trappings of a civilised society and then an increasing rate for items that are purely status symbols and the trappings and accessories of the golden few?
I was considering buying a silver britannia a month from the royal mint as a hedge against hyper inflation in the future, a way of holding a tangible asset when I’ve been priced out of all the other assett classes,
I was somewhat crest fallen to discover I would be charged VAT on silver coins purchased, £18 a coin +vat
I was then made indignant to discover that buying gold sovereigns would be vat exempt,
people who can afford to buy gold as a saving can afford the vat more easily than someone who is buying silver as a budget hedge,
if I bought a modest petrol hatchback to commute to work why should I pay the same vat rate as someone who buys ferrari’s or lamborghini’s to flaunt their affluence?
so.. I can swallow some austerity but it is made to taste so much more bitter when those in the winners enclosure seem to continue having a ball,
when Cameron boldly stated ‘we’re all in it together’ I wanted to fling my faeces at him,
I’m still waiting Cameron… oh.. you’ve already scarpered…
Bizarre vat there
I must admit my only knowledge of vat is when I personally encounter it,
I’d appreciate a Brief History of VAT if one was available,
from it’s inception, intent and justification, through it’s changes, widening and increases to what it has become today,
what may well have started as a lofty ideal seems to have turned into a blanket snatching of 20p in every pound I have to spend,
it also seems to have steadily increased over the same period of time as top tax rates have steadily fallen,
and why do businesses get to claim back vat they’ve been charged whilst private individuals have to suffer it as a cost of existing?
I’d love to do it
I regret I can’t see it happening
The day job is proving to be pretty demanding right now
I seem to remember VAT started at 8%.
With higher rates on luxury goods
I think VAT was 10% originally
8% plus luxury rates
Tax those yachts!
Unrelated, but on VAT. Back in the 1960s Britain had a world-leading yacht building industry. Not just luxury yachts, but firms that were competing successfully with Europe and the USA with excellent products for the mass market.
Unfortunately, Edward Heath sailed yachts, so that when Labour came to pour, as a merry jest, James Callaghan imposed Luxury Tax on yachts. This reduced demand and hurt the mass market companies badly.
Then when the Conservatives came to power. Geoffrey Howe had been reading too much Milton Friedman and on the best monetarist principles raised interest rates to curb inflation. There will be times when this may be the right thing to do, but not when a country has suddenly gone from 100% imported oil to self-sufficiency. The pound soared in value. The mass market yacht builders could no longer export and went to the wall. Firms that made a trickle of luxury yachts survived, because their margins could stand the shock.
A perfect example of how an industry can collapse, not through its own failings, but through the idiocy of politicians.
And how one apparently successful industry can destroy a completely unrelated industry as collateral damage.
Tell me, how many yachts does the world need when there are so many other problems to address?
Oh dear, Richard! I hope you are not going down with a form of Gradgrind virus. I am not remotely prejudiced, but I insist that sailing boats are an essential component of any civilised society. Seriously, leisure and the leisure industry are genuinely important. Most leisure jobs are low or ultra-low wage, but Callaghan and Howe wiped out a small skilled manufacturing component of the leisure industry through malice and stupidity.
Luxury yachts do not fit my definition of an essential part of a civilised society and never will
They’re conspicuous consumption, and little else
Read Veblen
But surely as long as the rich spend all their income it is ok because it gets recycled into the wider economy.
Yachts, football teams, art, wine, stamp collecting, I am not sure they are bad. In fact you could say better this than pushing up the price of land. Even may be weapons as long as no one uses them. As long as money keeps moving and the state gets a cut on each transaction, in order to provide everyone with the basics.
That’s a bit trickle down-ish
I am not saying leisure activity is wrong. I am known to partake of it occasionally
But when basic needs are not met I see no problem with repricing luxury goods as part of a programme of redistribution
My main concern is how poorly briefed* journalists are. She and her colleagues are able to tell repeated obvious lies which go unchallenged.
“If a Theresa tells a lie in a forest and no one is around to challenge it…”
* at least I hope they’re just poorly briefed, rather than knowingly complicit in creating the inequality, austerity and social division that all evidence suggests the Conservatives aspire to
Theresa May is akin to a malicious virus driven by the primeval instincts of the id because she can’t come up with any coherent arguments to justify her Double Whammy Austerity and Brexit policies. These policies are based on fairy-tale lies endlessly perpetuated by politicians and mainstream media hacks working for a socioeconomic elite. It is easy for Theresa May to find supporters of these lies because a great many electors are also driven by primeval id instincts as opposed to reason, especially on matters that are complex like monetary systems and global trading which are both inter-related.
I agree with George Parkinson that journalists are poorly briefed. I was reading an article in the Guardian/Observer this morning about the pensions triple lock, claiming that poorer pensioners would suffer most, if it’s abolished. The article was even retweeted by Owen Jones.
However, it’s not true. The poorest pensioners are those who don’t receive a full state pension (mainly women). A percentage increase gives them less than a flat rate increase would.
All the signs are there that the triple lock will be abolished, but if people are really concerned about poor pensioners it would be better to devise some formula based on a flat rate increase or CPI (or increase in average earnings), whichever is the greater. The way pensions interact with pensions credit also needs to be considered.
Pensions are a mess anyway, but peddling untruths isn’t helpful.
A brief history of VAT from an ex Customs man.
Introduced on 1 April 1973 as part of the conditions of our joining the EEC. So when we leave the EU we could abolish it! Unlikely though.
The standard rate was 10% and it applied to a much narrower range of goods and services than now and was marketed as the “simple tax”. Even petrol was zero rated in those days as were takeaway meals. The rate was reduced to 8%, a range of luxury items (yachts etc) were charged at 25% then 12.5%, when the Tories gained power in 1979 they almost doubled the standard rate to 15%, it rose to 17.5% with a temporary reduction to 15%, then the Tories were responsible for raising it to its current rate of 20%, so it does seem that they favour taxing expenditure rather than income.
Thanks