Polly Toynbee has one answer:
What happened this week accelerates the need for a Turner-type inquiry into tax. Choices need to be aired so people can understand and support a fairer system where the poorest no longer pay a higher proportion than the rich. This much Gordon Brown owes to those he disappointed this week.
Her point is vital: we have to re-establish the importance of progressive taxation. Without it the future of society looks very bleak indeed.
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It’s amazing the conclusions you can draw if you ignore the benefits side of the equation!
I believe that bleak is an understatement after such a disgraceful performance by a democratic government.
When the party that prides itself on principles of fairness does what Labour have done in the last week, choking on facing up to the real problems at hand at the cost of introducing seriously regressive changes to the tax system, who does anyone turn to for any sort of justice?
Shame on Brown and Darling for such a betrayal of the vast majority of the population. It’ll take some serious backtracking for me to believe they have any principles beyond ceding power to the wealthy.
Nick James
Andrew Rawnsley in today’s Observer summarises the spending review pretty well:
‘The comprehensive spending review was supposed to be the moment when Gordon Brown unveiled his vision for the next decade of a renewed government. That was utterly lacking from what was announced by Alistair Darling. The review and the accompanying mini-budget sounded as if it had been cobbled together on the back of a (now redundant) election leaflet.
For an example, take the bizarre new regime proposed for capital gains tax. That will still give privileged treatment to wealthy partners in private- equity funds. It will reward short-term speculators in property, antiques or fine wines. And it will punish ordinary workers in share ownership schemes and genuine entrepreneurs who have worked for years to build up successful businesses. I simply cannot understand how anyone in the Treasury or Number 10 thinks that this can be good for either enterprise or social justice. The CBI and the trade unions are in rare harmony in condemning what’s proposed. I can see that unravelling under pressure over the coming weeks.’
Colman
Agreed
Amazing, isn’t it?
Richard
Gordon Brown abandoned principle on tax when he, for whatever reason, cynically and quietly gave the Consultation Process on his ‘Opportunity for All’ soundbite to a ‘Savings Incentives Team’ in the Treasury instead of to an ‘Opportunity for All Team’. So we have tax advantages for those whose parents can afford to save which far outweigh the paltry £250/£500 Baby Bond/universal inheritance, itself inappropriately means tested by parental income at the time of birth instead of by lifetime receipts of unearned gifted and inherited capital. Was it perhaps Blair who stopped Brown from doing what he wanted to do in the first place? Interestingly. I had a reply a little while ago from an ‘Assets and Wealth Team’ in the Treasury, which is at least a move in the right direction.