Author: Samuel Hooper

Bold Proposals On Tax, Ignored By Cameron

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

taxcuts

 

As more people come out in support of scrapping the 40% tax band – or doing something, anything that might alleviate the pinch on middle income earners – David Cameron remains resolutely set against the idea.

This time, it was the turn of one of Cameron’s own No. 10 Policy Board members, Nadhim Zahawi, to advocate for 800,000 people caught up in the fiscal drag which has seen them start paying the 40% rate on their marginal income in the last three years.

The Telegraph reports:

Mr Zahawi on Wednesday praised plans by Renewal, a Tory pressure group, to abolish the 40p rate entirely and deliver a tax cut worth £2,000-a-year for 2 million middle class workers. 

Under the proposals, the move would be funded by lowering threshold for the 45p rate from £150,000 to £62,000. 

In a speech at Policy Exchange, a think-tank with links to the Conservative Party, Mr Zahawi said: “It is a welcome development that Conservatives have started to seriously debate where next for income tax. 

“Labour have the 50p, the Lib Dems have the mansion tax, we need our own iconic tax policy. I think Dave Skelton’s [from Renewal’s] contribution, and his suggestion that we abolish the 40p rate and pay for it by lowering the 45p rate was a great way of starting the conversation.”

Renewal’s plan is not perfect – £62,000 seems far too low to impose what is a very high top marginal rate of 45%, for instance. Nor is the idea of making an ‘iconic’ tax proposal just to have a handy catchphrase with which to compete with Labour and the Liberal Democrats redolent of good policymaking or government.

But this is a problem that affects people up and down the income scale, and the idea of giving some relief to those slightly higher up the scale deserved more than the immediate dismissal that it received from David Cameron. As the Telegraph continues:

Mr Cameron on Wednesday defended the government’s focus on increasing the tax free threshold. 

Asked if Tory back-benchers were right to call for the 40p threshold to be raised, Mr Cameron said: “I’m a tax cutting conservative. I want to see us relieve people’s tax burden. We’ve chosen to do that through raising the personal allowance which helps everyone earning under £100,000.”

David Cameron, the tax cutting conservative. It sounds good, but it is hardly an accurate claim.

When Cameron says that “we’ve chosen” to raise the personal allowance, he neglects to admit that this was a Liberal Democrat, not a Conservative policy. Had the LibDems not manoeuvred their way into coalition government, the Conservatives would likely never have entertained the idea of a personal allowance up to or exceeding £10,000. Now that he is also rejecting the idea of doing anything at all about the 40% tax band – either scrapping it or increasing the level at which it applies – he is committed to doing nothing significant for middle income earners either.

This leaves only those who earn enough to qualify for Gordon Brown’s new top rate of income tax, which George Osborne reduced from 50% to 45%. And that is the situation currently faced by the Conservative Party – the only concrete actions of this ‘tax cutting conservative’ party have been to cut the taxes for the very highest earners. This track record is every bit as bad as the optics make it seem.

Ed Miliband and the Labour Party like to talk about the “cost of living crisis”, and they are right to do so. Aside from the fact that there is obvious electoral mileage to be gained, someone needs to talk about the fact that despite the better economic news of late, wages remain stagnant while inflation continues to eat away at purchasing power. Economic growth means absolutely nothing to people if it is not reflected in their own personal circumstances.

At some point soon, people might start realising that another UK economic recovery built on booming property prices alone is unsustainable and undesirable. And when this happens, the focus will turn to consumer spending, and why it isn’t more buoyant.

Perhaps then the foolishness of treating ever more British wage earners as higher rate taxpayers will become more readily apparent.

Prince Charles, Nearly Exposed

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Who really gives David Cameron his marching orders?
Who really gives David Cameron his marching orders?

 

Today has seen a rare victory in the fight for government transparency and public access to information, as a judicial review ruled that the Attorney General was wrong to veto the publication of Prince Charles’ voluminous correspondence with ministers – known as the ‘black spider letters’ – and ordered that they be disclosed.

The British government fought this development every step of the way. Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, had used his veto to keep the letters secret after a previous ruling from an independent tribunal also ruled in favour of the public interest. However, at long last the time may have come for British citizens to read what the heir to the throne really thinks about all number of government policies and positions.

The Guardian – who waged a nine year campaign for access to the letters – report on their triumph:

Grieve had said that a cornerstone of the British constitution was that the monarch could not be seen to be favouring one political party over another. But he had said that any perception that Charles had disagreed with Tony Blair’s government “would be seriously damaging to his role as future monarch because, if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne, he cannot easily recover it when he is king”.

The 27 pieces of correspondence between Charles and ministers in seven government departments between September 2004 and April 2005 “are in many cases particularly frank”, according to Grieve.

Dominic Grieve and the rest of the cabinet clearly take the British people for fools. Only an idiot might think that Prince Charles is politically neutral. He has pungent and forceful views across a whole spectrum of topics from climate change to modern architecture, and his PR people take every opportunity to see that these are widely reported by anyone who will listen.

Rather than treating the British people with kid gloves as though we were sensitive little children liable to burst into tears at the sight of our parents arguing, Grieve should drop his ludicrous opposition and let us finally see what the future King thinks of his government of the people.

As the Guardian notes, the prince has taken an active interest in political matters for almost as long as Prime Minister David Cameron has been alive:

The freedom of information tribunal heard that he had been writing to ministers as long ago as 1969, when he expressed concern to the then prime minister, Harold Wilson, about the fate of Atlantic salmon.

The obvious danger is that Prince Charles’s concerns – the things that make him toss and turn at night – may well have changed and grown in the intervening forty-five years, as the number of government departments that he has corresponded with would seem to attest:

The letters concerned involve ministers in the Cabinet Office and the departments responsible for business, health, schools, environment, culture and Northern Ireland.

Worrying about salmon stocks in the north Atlantic is one thing; idly musing or ranting to ministers about Britain’s energy policy or nuclear deterrent, for example, would be another matter entirely. And one gets the strong suspicion that salmon have not remained the prince’s abiding focus.

Unfortunately, the Attorney General seems in no mood to compromise or listen to the overwhelming consensus of logic and legal opinion, and plans to appeal to the Supreme Court:

A spokesman for the attorney general said: “We are very disappointed by the decision of the court. We will be pursuing an appeal to the supreme court in order to protect the important principles which are at stake in this case.”

What important principles are these, exactly, other than the right of an unelected man to bully and intimidate junior government ministers into bending their policies and actions to his will? Should this really be the top priority for Dominic Grieve and his government office?

And why is the Attorney General going to battle to protect and enshrine the ability of society’s elites – be they financial, political, media or monarchical – to not only get their way, but then to have all record of them ever having tilted the playing field in their favour sealed from public view?

Dominic Grieve may serve as a minister in Her Majesty’s Government, but he was elected to represent we the people. Like the Guardian, I want to know how much money the government has spent on legal fees fighting to thwart the will and the interests of the people who elected them.

After Bob Crow, What Next?

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

SPS_bob_crow_2

 

Thus the Bob Crow era came to an abrupt and unexpected end, with the death of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union’s general secretary at the tragically early age of 52.

Bob Crow inspired strong feelings in many people, this blog included, but today is not the day to revisit those battles – Crow leaves behind a wife and four children, as well as countless devastated friends and admirers.

Indeed, regardless of what one may think of Crow’s ideology and tactics, the fact that he did good by his members (at least in the short-medium term) is indisputable. Tube drivers earn more than twice the starting salary of a new teacher, a remarkable if somewhat galling fact. RMT members’ loyalty to and trust in Bob Crow was well earned.

But what is likely to happen now that the gates have closed on the era of Bob Crow? Despite the efforts of a few other pretenders here and there, there does not seem to be the same appetite for the repeating, predictable, militant industrial action strategy that he rigorously followed.

And so as the RMT head office staff return to work tomorrow, the burning question will be whether the union chooses another leader willing to exploit the fact that he has London commuters gripped by the unmentionables to continue showering their members with terms and concessions that others can only dream of, or if they will decide to quit while they are ahead?

There is a compelling argument that Bob Crow’s tenure will come to be viewed as the high watermark of what activist, militant unionism can achieve for semi-skilled workers. The RMT’s most recent victory over Transport for London in the recent tube strikes was just as much a result of the abysmal strategy and negotiating tactics of TfL, and London mayor Boris Johnson’s dithering, than it was a Bob Crow triumph. A less hapless guardian of the public purse might have not allowed the RMT to get away with so many concessions.

This, ultimately, was the paradox that Bob Crow created for his members: with each passing victory, each benchmark-busting pay increase or working practices concession flaunted in the face of other workers and the general British public, the RMT only served to make the case for altering the people-to-technology ratio even further against employing real human beings.

Many lines on the London Underground are already highly automated. Indeed, the Docklands Light Railway is entirely driverless. As purchasing decisions for new rolling stock and signalling technology come around, a climate of industrial unrest – or the weary “what will they demand of us this time” mentality that it has created – can only make the case for maximum automation more compelling.

The cost of all of the RMT’s industrial relations victories – and they are short and medium term triumphs only – has been to make labour so expensive in relation to capital that the simple solution of exchanging the unreliable (labour) for the reliable (capital) has become a no-brainer. Boris Johnson, exasperated at the impact of unpredictable strikes on his mayoralty, is known to be interested. And contrary to what the RMT might say, or however they seek to misuse the memory of 7/7, most Londoners will be much happier to be whisked from A to Z under the streets of London at the hands of a computerised train than by an excessively remunerated humanoid with a tendency to go AWOL around Christmas or major international football tournaments.

Another side note of interest is the fact that Ed Miliband was so cautious in his praise of the RMT’s late leader, as the Guardian reports:

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said: “Bob Crow was a major figure in the labour movement and was loved and deeply respected by his members.

“I didn’t always agree with him politically but I always respected his tireless commitment to fighting for the men and women in his union. He did what he was elected to do, was not afraid of controversy and was always out supporting his members across the country.”

How far Ed Miliband has seemingly come since the days when he willingly leaped on stage with anti-austerity protesters and a cast of characters from all over the left wing political spectrum.

Could it be that so soon after Bob Crow’s latest triumph over the hapless Transport for London negotiating team and reconfirmation that public sector workers are being paid more than their private sector counterparts – at the height of his power – Crow had become somewhat politically toxic?

And so, when Robert Crow of Woodford Green is buried, dead at the height of his influence, his legacy is far from being set in stone. Mourned by his trades union colleagues, and his RMT members most of all, Crow’s ambition and determination helped them to prosper in recent years, while many other workers did not.

But, when we are all zipping around London in efficient driverless trains at 3AM on a bank holiday, will they still be so grateful to his memory?

SPS_bob_crow_1
Tribute to RMT leader Bob Crow, who died on 11th March 2014, written on the Service Information board at Covent Garden Underground Station

 

The text of the impromptu memorial to Bob Crow at Covent Garden Underground station, written on the Service Information board:

“Fear of death follows fear of life. A man who lives life fully is prepared to die at any time” – Mark Twain

R.I.P. Robert Crow RMT

13/06/1961 – 11/03/2014