The Guardian’s editorial today says: Labour – a party that pussyfooted around with avoidance for 13 years – needs to convince the country it will do better next time But as it then notes: That will have to involve hard and specific commitments to act. Mr Miliband is making the right noises, talking up comprehensive country-by-country reporting
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Labour has now published its new corporation tax policy, in four parts, each of which I consider in  turn: 1. HMRC Both the administration and enforcement of the tax rules have been impacted by cuts to HMRC resources, with the Chancellor pushing through over £2 billion of deep cuts. The Government plans to cut a further 10,000 HMRC staff, which
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The Observer has featured on tax issues this morning it seems. In their special report on tax avoidance they set the scene, saying: The debate is now raging over whether these companies are the happy beneficiaries of a tax system knitted with loopholes, or the malicious purveyors of smoke-and-mirror accounting. HM Revenue and Customs claims
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I am quoted in the Sunday Mirror today: Tax expert Richard Murphy said: “By being cheated out of £183 each year the British people are being taken for a ride. “We need a big politician to stand up to these companies.” That reflected a blog I wrote yesterday morning. Well, it looks like we’ve now got one
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Ed Miliband has adopted the tax justice agenda. According to the Observer this morning: Ed Miliband has vowed to rip up the rule book as prime minister and go it alone if there is no international consensus to tackle multinationals engaging in massive tax avoidance. In an interview with the Observer, the Labour leader urged David Cameron to find agreement at the G8 summit
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I believe Labour is moving sharply to the right, and very quickly. There’s talk of sticking to Tory spending limits despite the disaster that delivered in 1997. Deficit control is apparently vital, just when the economics of public debt and growth have been destroyed. Child poverty can no longer be tackled in the way it was, and
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There’s a very bizarre article in the Guardian from John Harris this morning, looking very like something that’s been fed to him from the Labour policy review. If it is, it’s very worrying. First there’s a ritual slagging off of those wh argue that spending is the way out of recession: From the centre of Labour’s ideological continuum leftwards, there is currently
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Having just published about conviction politics (in a piece actually written on Friday) I then discovered Ropy Hattersley has been doing the same thing in the Guardian this morning. I strongly recommend his article, and like his conclusion, which is: It is convictions that make politics worthwhile – an exciting and interesting as well as an honourable profession.  Unreconstructed Blairites will
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This is in the Guardian this morning: Tony Blair has renewed his call for Labour leaders to have the courage to stand up to their party base, as Ed Miliband told his MPs that his party had to move on from New Labour and heed Blair’s own advice to change. And Blair’s quoted as saying: The very fierce left-right distinctions
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