Nuanced is an interesting word. Nuance is, of course, a noun meaning ‘a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound' whilst nuanced is the related verb meaning ‘to give nuance to'.
Why does this matter? It came up in discussion of Labour's tax policy yesterday. I welcomed this as a nuanced document that gave meaning and contextual understanding to previous comments where, in my opinion, both principle and even policy had been hard to find.
As Maurice Glasman said on Radio 4 yesterday, announcements from Labour over the last few days have forced him to change his position on whether or not Labour is building a narrative. I do not think that Labour has delivered that complete narrative on tax as yet, but then the recent document only focused on business tax and related issues within the tax gap. But ,over the last week, their nuanced announcements have improved understanding and whilst I would like more, I think what we have now is significantly better than we had a week ago and begins to lay the foundation for the more informed tax debate that I hope happens over the next 10 months.
Nuanced policy matters, quite a lot, I think.
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I suppose you have to support it, given that it was basically written by Unite the union.
I wrote Unite’s tax submission to the Labour policy review
I don’t think I wrote the resulting policy
“Taxes should be simple, compulsory, and low”
…Admittedly, this is from a Chancellor whose record in office hovers somewhere between disaster and disgrace: but that particular nuance can be conveniently deemed inaudible.
He got re-elected three times because people were so happy with him
He got regulation wrong on banks
So did just about everyone because they did not know what would happen
And this one has not done anything to correct the mistakes
That’s the real disaster – and he does know what can happen
“He got re-elected three times because people were so happy with him”
A feat that the current chancellor will (barring an unfortunate wallpaper accident or the like) almost certainly achieve within a year, but I am not sure what either man’s electoral record has to do with anything.