I was heavily involved in debates on development for well over a decade. The whole purpose of the Tax Justice Network, of which John Christensen and I were the co-leaders for a long time, was to provide the fourth leg in development finance.
The first was aid.
The second was fair trade.
The third was debt relief.
The fourth was our goal of supporting the capacity of developing countries to collect tax owed to them.
Development does, then, matter to me, and I believe it the fundamental duty of high income countries like the UK to redistribute some of their prosperity to poorer nations to assist them in the global desire to relieve the serious poverty from which we all might suffer but for the accident of our place of birth.
Now the totally and utterly despicable people who form the UK Labour cabinet (and I make no exceptions: my description applies to them all) have decided that a £13 billion increase in defence spending here in the UK should be paid for by reducing support for some of the most vulnerable people in the world, many of them children, and a majority likely to be woman and girls in countries where their lives are especially hard. I hope they feel pleased with their day's work.
For the record, and as utterly inappropriately, the Tories would take the money from the UK welfare budget. The most vulnerable people in this country would instead pay for defence in their case.
No one in any media interview I saw asked the obvious questions, which are:
- What are we defending?
- Why are we defending it?
- What does the attacker want?
- Who stands to lose the most?
- Why aren't those benefiting paying the price of this defence?
The answers are, in order:
- UK property and tax revenue streams
- Because the wealthy want their privilege defended
- UK owned assets
- The wealthiest in the UK
- Because Labour is a party run for the benefit of the wealthiest in the UK.
Literally, no one asked why tax couldn't be increased to cover this cost if it was so important to undertake this spending or why borrowing could not be used instead - as would be economically appropriate.
Why, oh why, oh why? What are these Labour ministers, all of whom now seem to have had empathy bypasses, thinking they are doing?
I am not saying do not spend money on defence, but I am saying that they need to be honest about what they are really defending, and who therefore needs to pay the price. That the most vulnerable are being asked to defend the wealth of the most privileged is unconscionable, and yet it is happening.
I make no pretence that I am trying to hide my anger. I loathe these people for a very good reason. They are the enemies of justice.
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Exactly. Since the Pearson report of 1964 we have aimed to spend 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid. Now it’s to be cut to less than half of that, & no-one’s explaining why the world’s poor (whose poverty is partly due to our own imperial history) no longer need it. Not are they explaining why an increase in defence expenditure has to come from other government departments’ budgets.
That number doesn’t sound quite true Christopher. From memory the UK spends about 2.4% of national income on overseas aid of which 0.5% is collectivised i.e. run through government.
There’s many an economist (Besley, Montalvo, Reynal-Querol) who has analysed government overseas aid and found that communicable diseases excepted it does not do net good to the receiving country. We should not be downhearted about the cuts announced yesterday so long as they don’t cut spend on tackling communicable diseases.
Politely, that makes so sense at all. It’s as if the govermentn does not matter on this issue to you. I assure you, it does.
[…] admit that the supposed 'once in a lifetime' decision taken by Keir Starmer to increase UK defence spending by something approximating to the square root of diddly squat has […]
I could add of course
1. Hhow are we defending things,
2. How might we get the maximum benefit from defence expenditure eg improving utilities, railways, a revitalised UK Merchant Fleet etc etc……..
Utterly predictable behaviour from labour of course. The government is short of money argument yet again, and oh no, we can’t raise taxes ….
Pathetic. As you have said Richard, what real difference is there between tory and labour?
Okay, under Bad Enoch, they are getting even crazier and more extreme as your previous post notes as they try to match the Reform fascist morons.
But otherwise, any real significant differences in the approach to the role of government, how the government’s finances work, the “special relationship” (ho ho ho), attitude to the public sector etc, etc?
Not really.
I’ve always said defence should wholly be paid for by a Wealth tax. Yes I know you are against it and have alternatives but let’s put that aside. People with wealth < £10m would be exempt. Defence expenditure is to protect assets so it's pretty obvious those that own them should pay for it
It could not work
Why do you want failed tax system?
I regard you as the financial Oracle (send links of your videos to friends) but I respectfully disagree. A Wealth Tax can work. Set up a unit in, say, Newcastle or Liverpool, with 1,000 financial experts and get them at it.
Sorry, but yoyu are wrong. I have explained why many times, and I caqn only presume you have never worked in finance or accounting or tax, because if you had you would know why it cannot work. Anhd it also raises a pittance comapred to what I suggest is possible in the Taxing Wealth Report 2024. So why waste time with it?
For the record I graduated from UCL in 1982 with an Economics degree. Joined (then Ernst & Whinney) in the September. Qualified in 1985. Joined a US firm in 1992 for a couple of years then ran my own business from 1994 to present. I know it all. We should try a Wealth Tax, if it doesn’t work ditch it and try something else
You clearly do not know it all.
You are just wrong and are wasting my time. Do it again, and I will ban you because repetition on stupid ideas – which is precisely what a wealth tax is for reasons I have explained – is the sought of ridiculous activity that undermines real delivery of necessary outcomes in society.
Point noted. It’s your blog.
Well put. I was abrasive to a Labour council leader last night, a friend, as he sought to duck the issue. Labour is morally bankrupt and corrupt. I just wish there was a coherent opposition.
As far as I know there was nothing in the Labour Manifesto about not increasing property taxes. Nor would, say, raising tax on unearned income to the rates on earned income breach that notorious promise not to raise tax on ‘working people’ – how many ordinary working people actually get to use their CGT allowance every year anyway? It’s a tax bung to the already wealthy.
Of course, television interviewers earning £100,000s a year probably do use it…
I think that many of us called out Starmer right some time a go.
He is a populist – blue Labour to the core.
He is neo-liberal as far as state expenditure is concerned – he believes that he only has so much money and must rob Peter to pay Paul. 2008 could have been centuries ago as far as his little mind is concerned.
There has been no change. Just a difference face.
Richard Murphy’s Five Questions:
What are we defending?
Why are we defending it?
What does the attacker want?
Who stands to lose the most?
Why aren’t those benefiting paying the price of this defence?
You’re in good company Richard. Thank you.
Last week, Labour floated raising taxes to pay for the war. The war would get them off the hook of their promise not to raise them, in a way that mending the NHS, dentistry, cutting child poverty, you name it, did not allow. This week it looks as if they’ve bottled the tax rise – for the moment at least – but found another way.
I’ve just listened to BBC radio. America is pleased that we will cut aid to pay for an increase in arms spending. A retired general explained that at the moment we cannot defend ourselves. The threat is when Russia invades Poland. The implication is that Britain has to stand up to Russia by itself. I cry bullshit.
According to wikipedia (figures with references but no doubt you can argue), Russian spending on arms was $65 billion last year, with a note that it could be higher. But pretty much what we spend and they are in the middle of a war. Adding up quickly, it looks as if Europe together spends more than $400 billion. Britain spends $74 billion at 2.3% of its GDP; Germany spends $67 billion at 1.5%; Italy $35 billion at 1.6%, Sweden $8.8 billion at 1.5%. But we must cut aid, or privatise the NHS, and America is pleased. Hurray.
The 30 or so countries in western Europe could divide the cost of stopping Russia. ($140 billion? – a made-up figure, but twice the Russian spend.) Cut our arms spending by three-quarters and fix things instead. (Over time, I know we manufacture arms.) This isn’t going to happen, obviously, but we should be clear it is not about defending ourselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_Russia#Comparison_with_other_countries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
Good point. Russia is the only country remotely likely to pose a threat to us so why would we need to spend more. Ukraine needs to become neutral, do the deal with Trump and the rest of Europe pose a united -but very much defensive- front to Russia. Do we even need the US?
There is cyber attack, which could come from anyone, and not just enemy states. As it stands, we have an attack force rather than a defence force, and play a minor part of whatever America get’s up to. Perhaps that is the real politik; don’t upset Rome or you get flattened in turn. In which case let’s be honest, and not pretend we can’t defend ourselves, not with all that money being spent.
But right now,mi very much doubt we could. We spend on the wrong things. We do not need Trident, for a start.
“But right now, I doubt that we could [defend ourselves].”
If we spend all that money on military capability but can’t defend ourselves, then either we are incompetent or we don’t actually want to defend ourselves with our military capability; we want to do something else instead. But when the moment comes, it’s defending ourselves that’s the justification. You are so right about Trident, but here we are.
We have an offence force, not a defence one. The old age of empire.
Funny how these ‘difficult decisions’ are always making things difficult for other , poorer people, never themselves.
Agreed
The final sentence sums it up perfectly.
They [Labour]are the enemies of justice
Why should young people join the military when the country by and large does not care for their well being? I wouldn’t (besides the ideological reasons). Fortunately it is not 1914 anymore and people don’t believe the propaganda.
It was reassuring to hear that former Green MP, Caroline Lucas, had championed your exact points on Newsnight last night, despite the usual BS rebuttal assertion that all our ‘precious’ wealthy parasites would leave the UK if we ever dared to tax them. I was truly amazed to hear that any BBC news or political discussion program had risked inviting a credible contributor from the left to make an appearance and offer a valid opinion. This aberration was probably just a meaningless token attempt to claim political ‘balance’ at the BBC.
I must look it out.
Nowadays very little of this spending seems actually relevant to the defence of the UK and its people against an aggressor. In reality this ceased not long after WW2. I suppose you could say that Mutually Assured Destruction is defensive in intent, but if ever our bluff was called or a mistake made our country would be utterly destroyed along with the rest of “civilisation “. And of course if NATO is finished as far as the US is concerned, our nuclear deterrent has a limited use by date anyway. As you suggest what is being defended is something else altogether. Major military efforts by the UK in recent decades have included defending the Union against the IRA, Korea, Thatchers Falklands war, Suez, US led offensive actions against Sadam and others and the folly in Afghanistan. The less said about these the better. Not my idea of defence.
You wrote a few days ago, ‘Labour are charlatans’. I thought that though there is some truth in that, surely Clive Lewis, MP, with his Water Bill, is an exception.
Looking back I have discovered that on October 16 2024 you wrote, ‘My friend and fellow Green New Deal Group member, Clive Lewis MP, will be tabling a bill for the reform of the water industry in the House of Commons today.’
While 12,600 people have written to their MP in support of his proposals. I am one of only 876 people who have sent a donation to help Clive deal with the bankers and billionaires that he is up against.
If I read that post, I had forgotten it. You have acquired many more followers since then
I imagine you are intending to write in support of Clive in any case but, lest people should think that you think Clive a ‘charlatan’, surely it would help if you wrote some more about him and his bill – which is due to be debated on Friday 28th March.
I will do it again…..