According to the FT two Labour 'big beasts' have warned Ed Miliband not to talk about 'predatory capitalism. The article says:
Ed Miliband has been warned by two former Labour ministers that he is alienating business leaders by speaking a language they do not understand, failing to listen and giving the impression he wants to harm big British companies.
Do these two have any idea what Labour should be about?
Or is it that 'big beasts' are always self interested?
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The fact that both Myners and Mandelson are completely part of the neoliberal City establishment says it all really – Ed would be best advised to expel people like this from the party. I guess that might mean he loses a chunk of the PLP, but so be it. They can always join the Lib Dems on the gravy train to oblivion.
Labour tried doing things the Mandelson/Myners way and the result (eventually( was the worst recession in at least 100 years and the lowest Labour share of the vote since 1983. Success?
Normally this kind of thing is written up by Blairite apologists Pat Wintour and Nick Watt in the Guardian but they seem to have gone for the FT instead today – I wonder why?
It would be great if you would send this comment to every Labour MP.
Clueless, I’d say – certainly in the case of Mandelson, less so for Myners, given his interventions over the Co-Op Group.
But business, or certainly “big business” SHOULD be scared silly, given their depredations of everything worthwhile and fought for over the pas 100 years. Take a look at the appalling TTIP “scam” for example at http://nblo.gs/XCwVj – a licence for big business to print money, or rather to steal from the poor.
Frankly, they should be glad not to be decorating lamp=posts!
I think all they want to do is enable Labour to be elected. At present it seems they aren’t understanding that bit of politics.
Is there any indication of who these big-beasts are?
Here’s a recent view of one of them that I can’t disagree with:
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/06/10/the-myths-of-gordon/
Must be an election looming….even the FT is getting in on the act.
Don´t worry guys, Big Ed´ is bought and paid for!
I fear that such advice is a counsel of despair, that the only game in town is predatory capitalism & to challenge it means defeat.
Could they be the same ones who persuaded him that endorsing yesterday’s free Sun was a bright thing to do? With advisers like this I’m afraid we’re looking at 10 years of Cameron.
Indeed
One dislike point for the word ‘Indeed’!
Come on Tim…tell us why you don’t like the word! Is it fundamentally left-wing or something…
I guess the expectation is for Ed to sweet-talk business in the same way that the Tory’s sweet-talk the people.
Ha…he’s being advised not to talk about the most vital and important subject of our time? Another one you couldn’t make up. It’s about time politicians showed their true colours and wore football shirts with sponsors names on with all their literature sporting the logos of sponsors!
I do not believe that any genuine statesman can work for the 99% and the 1%.
As you have said, you have to take sides with tax, and the same is true for banks and the general population. This is just two sides of a very similar argument. ie to redistribute, or to extract wealth for the few.
This other FT article reveals who Lord Mandelson works for
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6a7f9d88-3180-11e2-92f0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz34WUE0Mun
the article quotes:
“Lord Mandelson is thought to have been introduced to Lazard by his friend Nat Rothschild, who worked for the bank in the mid-1990s”.
Need I say more?
Change ‘clueless’ to ‘spineless’ and you get a more penetrating question.
As for these ‘big beasts’ they are probably quite happy for big British companies to cause harm to little British people. The quote is actually complete crap anyway. There is an academic specialism of ‘business ethics’ and so if British business leaders haven’t heard of it or won’t engage with it that’s their problem. I’m quite sure they have heard the language we are told ‘they do not understand’. Poor dears…
It really is about time that big British business stopped relying on the good nature of the British people. Pay you f***ing taxes you parasites!!!!
The comment I find surprising here is Howard Reed’s “Labour tried doing things the Mandelson/Myners way and the result (eventually) was the worst recession in at least 100 years…”
Howard is usually very clear in conveying his meaning and I am reading a causal link into this statement. Could I ask Howard if he is claiming a causal link between the last Labour government and the 2008 recession and, if so, what it is.
Light touch regulation of business I suspect
Hello Ironman
Thanks for your comment. I think there would have been some kind of recession in 2008 regardless of the policies Labour pursued between 1997 and 2007, but the recession in the UK was particularly bad because Labour encouraged very light touch regulation of financial services, and the result was that the asset price boom and subsequent bust was worse in the uk than most other countries. Furthermore, the financial services sector in the UK is fairly large relative to GDP (partly asa a result of deregulation under Thatcher and New Labour), which made us more vulnerable. I hope that makes things clearer.
Look at the sweat Miliband threw the LibDems into when he proposed his quite weak and fairly meaningless promise to cap energy prices for up to two years. That gained him a lot of popularity.
If the man could grow a backbone and promise to bring railways into public ownership once the franchise of the private companies runs out (which will cost the taxpayer absolutely nothing) the Labour party will walk in in the next election.
I virtually guarantee it!
They won’t do it-they are scared to death of a vox populi that has been carefully groomed to think:
1) Governments are households
2) The unemployed are skivers
3) Hordes of immigrants are poised to take our fantastic zero hours jobs
4) Housing booms are good things and help the economy.
5) It’s good that the poor pay disproportionately for the rapaciousness of the banking sector.
Labour are the walking undead-there is literally no sign of meaningful life in them. I don’t blame people for voting UKIP when they are presented with a gormless clone of the Tories.
It’s difficult to determine whether it’s cluelessness or malevolence. Reflecting recently on our own challenge to predatory capitalism, the neoliberal faction within New Labour proved to be a greater obstacle than local mafia. Mandelson with his oligarch connections was in a good position to block us.
A decade later they’ve started to sing from our hymn book, with Blair at Davos alongside Branson. As with the Inclusive Capitalism cabal, talking is as far as it goes.
http://www.p-ced.com/1/node/282
This is beyond belief. Predatory capitalism (and I would include tax dodging multinationals in this class) is the very version of capitalism that should be targeted in order to save capitalism from itself!
I’ve been thinking about infamous (all in the best possible taste ie “legal”) tax dodgers.
We have a “Construction Industry Scheme” that imposes a higher (30%) tax rate on sub contractors that aren’t registered for this scheme. This hits the sales of the sub contractors.
Why not have a system to register businesses for a “Fair Capitalism Scheme” an extension of your “Fair Tax Mark” scheme?
The deterrent for not registering would be a targeted higher VAT rate say 25% (or 30%) instead of 20% and would hit all “non compliant” businesess at their weakest point, their sales.
Why not tap into the power of consumerism and try and turn it against “Predatory Capitalist” businesses?
The burden of higher VAT rate on sales would go along way to re balance the market place so that fair capitalist businesses can compete on level terms with predatory capitalist businesses.
The businesses would be free to sell their products, their sales invoices would simply report the higher VAT rate. Their customers would be free to buy their products, but they would know why they are paying a higher VAT rate.
Take Starbucks for example, its “legal tax dodging” would be classed as predatory capitalism and a higher VAT rate would be paid on its products
The usual VAT rate for businesses of 20% would be available to say Costa Coffee that don’t engage in legal tax dodging and pays corporate tax on all its profits earned in the UK.
Monsanto for example would be excluded from the fair capitalism scheme, because of its rampant profiteering with its “terminator seeds”.
I realise that this idea requires further work eg what should be done about businesses making predominantly VAT exempt supplies such as banks and insurance companies in order to deter predatory capitalism.
“We have a “Construction Industry Scheme” that imposes a higher (30%) tax rate on sub contractors that aren’t registered for this scheme”
No we don’t. That’s a withholding rate, not a tax rate.
Your VAT suggestion is absurd. You’re suggesting a higher VAT rate for (essentially) businesses that are obeying the law but which you don’t like. Who would decide which legal tax planning was ‘objectionable’ and therefore required a higher VAT rate? You? On what basis? With what safeguards or appeals process? And if the customer were itself a VAT registered business it would have no effect as the VAT would be recoverable.
If you really did find yourself in a position of power to change VAT law, why not just change the law relating to the tax planning you find ‘objectionable’.
I’d never dream of suggesting how to make car engines more efficient as I know nothing about how car engines work, yet everyone who’s read a tabloid article on tax thinks they know how to make the tax system more efficient.
We all lay tax
And given how little most tax practitioners know about how the tax system works as a whole lay people have every reason to think they can be competent on this issue
Chris
I haven’t got Richard’s patience, so I’ll make this as brief as possible.
We could describe the “withholding rates” as the “Standard Rate of Deduction” or the “Higher Rate of Deduction”.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/cisrmanual/CISR13000.htm
Ultimately the “deductions” are on account of tax or offset against tax eg 1.14 page 9 CIS340
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/cis340.pdf
I’m no longer interested in being compartmentalised and waltzing down intellectual “cul de sacs” in the pursuit of “technical perfection” as so many in the tax profession remain content to do so.
Instead I’m far more interested in the economic impact of tax and how it can be used to shape a “fairer and kinder” society. Surely that means thinking the unthinkable and being prepared to challenge the consensus, which you appear to regard with “vehement suspicion of heresy”.
Why focus simply on tax dodging (and that is what it is so let’s call a spade a spade)? Why continue playing the never ending game of closing loopholes? Why do the people as represented by the state have to go through this expensive ordeal, because of a determined minority to cheat. Why not go to the root of the problem, which is predatory capitalism spawned by a lack of any form of morals or scruples?
I’m well aware of the difficulties that need to be overcome before of introducing my VAT proposal. It’s clear you did not bother to read the last paragraph of my previous comment.
I’m far from being alone though with the wish to tackle predatory capitalism, there is support for this across the political spectrum.
Lastly, with regard to not knowing how a car engine works, may be you should you find out how one works. Perhaps the experience of doing so would broaden your outlook?
I support your boldness in rethinking tax
And share your frustration with the pedants of the so-called tax profession
“an extension of your “Fair Tax Mark” scheme?”
Talking of which, Richard, how’s that coming along?
With 2,992,127 active companies registered at Companies House, what percentage have signed up to the “Fair Tax Mark” scheme? What numbers would need to sign up for you to consider the scheme a success?
Going well, thank you
We’re pleased right now
More soon
So no news on the number of companies that have signed up?
Not even an estimate?
When we feel like saying so, yes