Bob Piper has been a Labour Councillor for the Abbey
Ward in Sandwell, West Midlands, for 10 years. He is a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa Football Club and a follower of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The views expressed here are mine in a personal capacity, not those of the Labour Party, Sandwell MBC, Aston Villa or Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Get it! Mine... just mine!
Over the last decade or so Labour and the Conservatives have tried to outdo each other over which was the Party of tax cutters. The Tories were traditionally the Party that axed public spending, and claimed the credit for lowering taxes. Labour under Blair/Brown worked out that voters may say they want good public services to opinion pollsters, but in the secrecy of the ballot box they reverted to a Hobbsian creature of self-interest and voted for tax cuts. Of course, in reality, neither the Labour nor Conservative Governments appeared to most people to be reducing the overall burden of taxation, but merely headline grabbing by making cuts to direct taxation, i.e. income tax.
The Labour left, and the Liberal Democrats, argued strongly that in order to achieve social justice the promise to cut taxes was, in reality, a promise to make the wealthy even wealthier, and the poor would remain poor. Of course, both argued that the poor and those on low incomes should be taken out of taxation altogether, and those on higher incomes should pay more, but those advocating the Blair/Brown/Tory case knew that unless you promised to reduce taxes for that large swath of middle-class, and high earning working class voters, you weren't going to appeal to the self-interest of the wider electorate. Blair/Brown knew the traditional working class instinctively voted Labour anyway... so they were making their pitch for those in that middle ground.
The Liberal Democrats had a dilemma, though. If they were to make a breakthrough they would need to not only convince the electorate that they were a party of social justice, they knew they also needed to attract the working class vote. Their argument centred around raising income tax for the higher earners and paying for the social justice agenda out of that money. Frequently, however, when questioned on this around election time, the sums just didn't seem to add up, and far too many of those 'high earners' were very hard working salesmen, accountants, doctors, teachers and other working class professional folk, and quite a few who worked in more traditional manual occupations.
Well, it seems, we are all tax cutters now. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, often perceived as much more 'conservative' in his views than his predecessors has decided to get on the 'we can tax lower than you' bandwagon. Not only are they promising to reduce taxes for the less well off, they are claiming they will reduce the overall tax burden, and guess what... he's going to pay for it out of that age old device of 'cutting out waste'.
It is not often I will refer to Guido in these pages, but I do think he raises a valid point when he questions whether Clegg can carry his party activists with him on this one. The left of the Liberal Democrat Party must be starting to feel like those of us on the left of the Labour Party as we watched the monetarist train leave town with out leaders waving goodbye to us as they disappeared up the track. The more you look at Clegg, the more he morphs into David Cameron who looks like Tony Blair who looked like Margaret Thatcher.
It seems to me that politicians put the question of taxes the wrong way round. Instead of worrying about penny-pinching here or there, they should instead consider the number of *functions* carried out by government. The 'Blessed Margaret' gave a lead when she decided, amongst other things, that the government should not be running telecommunications and railways and so she flogged them off.
Here's a little challenge for you, Bob, because you're a politician, which functions of the current government would you scrap?
Not a shattering insight I know but this just demonstrates what I've long argued - that the 'tax & spend' element of our politics will go the way of the US where taxes are viewed as a necessary evil across the parties. The idea of 'paying your dues' or any notion of collectivism will wither and die. As Cameron hinted a couple of weeks ago social justice will become about 'families', 'faith' or 'communities' groups and the idea of the state as any significant guarantor of social justice will be a quaint anachronism.
I'm to your right but I'm still uneasy about this and not sure if there's anything the more traditional left can do to check it. I know this sounds very 'Cameron' but I suspect they need to narrow the scope of some social spending (i.e. sack 'five-a-day' fruit & veg co-ordinators, cohesion officers, real-nappy officers etc.), use this to nullify the 'waste' argument and demonstrate that the state only does what it has to but then put your full weight behind the things the state should be doing and often does better than anyone else - health, education etc.
That would make the drift to US attitudes to tax harder to achieve although it still might not be enough.
It's not often I share your pessimism on something but on this I do....
Over the last decade or so Labour and the Conservatives have tried to outdo each other over which was the Party of tax cutters.
No taxes have risen under Labour, government spending has increased 30% and you cannot claim that Labour and Conservatives are equally guilty of the stealth tax weezes .We were not there during their explosion .Yes, Thatcher started it , and to interpret kindly , it was a move to flatter tax and away from taxing work .
New labour have used it as a con , as they have PFI`s ,inflation measures and much more. I agree with you that Labour have treated the working class vote with utter contempt and that many should be out of tax. I agree with your implication that the whole Heath Robinson paraphernalia of tax credits was a hugely expensive calamitously incompetent waste of time ...Brown`s baby. Why not just leave people with their money.
Well perhaps I am over doing the partisanship . Where I really think you and I would agree is in the despair one feels when the clever clever Liberals change tack every minute.
During the 90s when Brown was spending us into the hole we are in, the Liberals were attacking from the left . There was never any spending commitment that should not be higher and they duly chipped at labour support on those grounds .
Admittedly the Conservative Party were not awfully forthcoming on condemning spending , always a hard thing to do, but we were culturally sent to Coventry because of our historic preference for free markets , fiscal prudence and low taxes . I know this gets a bit more complex in real life but if we can keep to the broad brush strokes , I hope you know what I mean. We did our time and it was not fun being the baddies.
Now look at the contrast. I will be fair with you .The current dilemma is not really Brown’s fault in an obvious way and he is being treated unfairly Set against that his irresponsible borrowing and , in my view , dangerous love affair with a large state ( you will disagree no doubt ). This does not help , and god knows he took the credit for the NICE years which had even less to do with him. That’s the game I `m afraid and I cannot say ,despite a real attempt to be even handed, he has played it well.
.David Cameron yesterday, in the Guardian , warned the Conservative Party that tax rises must be expected under his administration. He resisted promises of tax cuts fiercely and when his own leadership was not strong ( and we do get rid of ours ). Partly this is an ambition to apply new thinking to education the underclass and the NHS which will cost in the short term . More importantly as we go into slow down the claims on the state will rocket and revenues collapse. Look at what happened under Thatcher.
I do not see any way any faintly responsible real world Politician can talk about overall tax cuts at this time .I sort of agree about waste , much of it is unavoidable if you cut it here it will grow there . The only real way to cut waste is to bear down on the Public sector which is inherently wasteful. There may well be over spending here and there but the idea the Liberals would run anything better is a joke .
So if it irritates you that the Liberals have ducked behind the curtain and popped back onto the stage in Conservative clothes just imagine how infuriating it is for me having suffered their tutting and superiority for so long . It is worth pointing out that prior to the SDP Liberals were little nothing on 5% and Huhne actually won the leadership race. Clegg has been forced to drop his orange book agenda by the Labour lite Party and this is no more or less than pile of crap aimed at Southern seats . If you are never in government then you do not have Policies you have adverts and this is one that should be banned by the advertising standards authority
Great post Bob one of your best , actually I recently posted on tax myself and I am back in business on occassion
LFAT, your glib assertion is wrong. Raising green taxes would pay for cuts to income tax for low and medium earners. I'd cut or abolish VAT.
If we have to have tax, let it be levied on polluters rather than hard-pressed people, who are going to work in low-paid jobs and consuming essentials and are burdened by Labour.
The Liberal Democrat policies are revenue neutral, as you'd know if you looked at the sums without partisanship.
I'm not affiliated to the party, I've become non-partisan so I can support or oppose individual policies freely. But to slate Cable when all you've got to offer is Gideon Osbourne is not on.
Bob, you should be reassured that the Liberal Democrats, and I, are seeking the same ends as Labour. But these ends cannot be achieved by endlessly taking people's money off them and handing it back to the very same in benefits, or by high taxes on people who are hard pressed and trying to build a better life for themselves. Labour have used too much government, not too little, their problem has been to do the wrong thing with the money they've levied.
A large state is not progressive in and of itself, nor is a small state reactionary.
You must have had thoughts along these lines. It's time to admit it ;)
I blame Margaret Thatcher (as you know). By fiddling the books and using capital receipts to spend as revenue she kept tax rates artificially low (and she cut out spending on such wasteful things as maintaining schools or hospitals and their contents (I guess Cleggie would have to do similar?)).
Nowadays the UK has low rates of tax by comparison with most similarly developed major nations (including the US who have city, state and fed taxes to pay in addition to their health insurance bills!) but no one believes it. As Tom Harris says (sort of) in his blog, it’s an amazing achievement that the publisher and editor of the Daily Express can persuade their impoverished readers to campaign to keep their (the publisher's and editor's) tax rates low. You can fool some of the people for a lot of the time. We live in a wonderful world...
July 17, 2008 9:05 AM | permalink
It seems to me that politicians put the question of taxes the wrong way round. Instead of worrying about penny-pinching here or there, they should instead consider the number of *functions* carried out by government. The 'Blessed Margaret' gave a lead when she decided, amongst other things, that the government should not be running telecommunications and railways and so she flogged them off.
Here's a little challenge for you, Bob, because you're a politician, which functions of the current government would you scrap?