For those of us sad enough to watch Keir Starmer in debates and keep tabs on his interviews, this won't catch one unawares. Labour's pledges to fix all the things but not get drawn on where the money is coming from has spurred its own sub genre of election 2024 commentary. Starmer and Rachel Reeves have categorically ruled out another round of austerity, which has led to speculation about borrowing or more tax rises. But here too, Labour has met this with a wall of denial. Reeves's so-called fiscal rules want to get state debt down and is more of a priority than pushing the green transition. So much so, you'll recall, she scaled back Labour's spending commitments. On the other hand, whenever Starmer has promised not to raise taxes on "working people". National Insurance, income tax, and VAT are off limits. But if you're eagle-eyed enough, he hasn't ruled out all taxes.
The Graun splash reveals Labour are considering increases to capital gains tax, and changes to inheritance tax to prevent its avoidance through tax relief schemes and "gifting". Which is a very common practice among well heeled families. Taken together, they could raise up to £10bn/year. Useful in a pinch, but quite marginal compared to what the Greens are pressing for.
This begs the question. Why is the Labour leadership being shy about these deliberations? Indeed, even though nothing is set in stone there's no reason why there couldn't have been a passage in the manifesto explaining that, thanks to the state of public finances, an incoming government would explore more revenue raising measures. It's not as though the document lacks vague promises of investigations into and initiatives about this and that. Why would another one hurt?
All politicians want to occupy a zone of non-punishment, where negative criticisms are deflected or, if they're not, they do not become amplified. Over the last couple of years particularly, change in the "changed Labour Party" has meant dumping all policies that might cause a bit of friction with vested interests. And where they haven't been jettisoned, policy has got watered down. "Bomb proofing" the manifesto has meant not building anything the Tory press would consider worth dropping ordinance on. That way, the reasoning goes, Starmer glides along the path of least resistance into Number 10, benefiting from an electoral coalition stretching from the Stockholm syndrome left to the anti-immigration right. Promising little and saying little isn't political cowardice but is super smart grown up politics laser focused on winning.
What is ridiculous is having them in the manifesto would have helped halt the fraying of the Labour vote we're starting to see around the edges. For those who think the rich have had it all their way for too long, which includes not a few wealthy people, the promise of wealth taxes, as slim as these proposals are, offer a positive case to vote Labour. The party leadership knows this. So if not cowardice, how to explain this aversion to doing something popular? Unfortunately, it's for the same reasons why Rishi Sunak's premiership set out to offer nothing and, indeed, has delivered just that (apart from the most memorably cack-handed campaign of recent times). For Starmer and Reeves, the playing down of hope, the use of change as an empty signifier, the promise they won't do anything that defies the gods of money, etc. is an effort at managing expectations so they can keep control of the narrative about their government. If you start promising things, people's expectations are raised and politicians come unstuck as they refuse to meet popular pressure. Saying you want to tax a bit of wealth can immediately lead to questions about inequality, private ownership and, horror of horrors, class. Issues Starmer and friends absolutely don't want to deal with.
At the beginning of the campaign, Starmer said "Change means stability". In this instance, that means stability for them. Not raising expectations isn't just for the ease of campaigning. It makes for easy governing too.
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3 comments:
MY guess is that the leak of those "potential" wealth taxes, like Starmer's "I am a socialist" claim, was designed to delude social-democrat Labour voters that the New, New Labour Party which has replaced it is also a social-democratic party. "The Observer" is even pushing the idea that hard-brexiter Starmer might move to re-join the EEA without any evidence (other than Starmer's well known "pragmatism").
What keeps me surprised is that "I am a socialist" and "wealth taxes" are being mentioned so mildly by the right-wing press, instead of being pushed day and night as they are electoral poison for the "Middle England" affluent properties voters whom Starmer has chosen as his core constituency. Even more so than VAT on private school fees.
Just looking now at the "Telegraph.co.uk" the leading title is "Starmer: Wealth redistribution 'not enough' to level up Britain". just above a column written by Starmer to appeal to readers of the "Telegraph", that is the "Telegraph" is helping the New, New Labour campaign, while virtually all the mentions of the Conservatives are negative. BTW as to VAT on independent school fees there is this heart-breaking :-) article:
“‘I cried when my daughter got a £35k bursary – but Labour could still ruin her future’
Tax raid on private schools means fees will get further out of reach for ordinary families”
which somehow labels as "ordinary families" the top 5% who send their precious children to private schools.
«Up until Ms Truss' premiership Labour was trailing in the polls»
Good point, not many people have noticed that for the first 2 years of his leadership Starmer was getting nowhere and it was only around the beginning of 2022 that tory voters started being upset with the Conservatives. Look at this poll-of-poll clicking on "ALL" top-left:
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/
Note how in mid-2019 there were BXP and LD surges at the expense of Labour and Conservatives (and how Labour was so close to winning in 2017 and would have won but for the operatives of the Militant Mandelsoncy).
The question is whether it was initially more the anti-Conservative-leadership campaign of the right-wing press that flipped tory voters, which peaked with Liz Truss, or the outrage with the stalling property prices that had the most initial impact. Another interesting "detail" is here:
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html
The situation is that New, New Labour is at 39.5% of polls, less than the share of votes Corbyn got in 2017, and not much higher than that in 2019 (and it is just a poll), and Conservatives plus Reform together get 37.7%.
That shows how few tory voters are actually switching to New, New Labour, but those few get to determine 90% of New, New Labour's policies. On the other side something like 45% of Conservative voters claim they are switching to Reform, quite a different situation.
> The question is whether it was initially more the anti-Conservative-leadership campaign of the right-wing press that flipped tory voters, which peaked with Liz Truss
Word on the street has it that the "anti-Conservative-leadership campaign" was really an "anti-Boris-Johnson" campaign, it came from Tufton Street (for whom Boris was insufficiently libertarian and far, far too green), and Truss was their favoured replacement for him. Up to and including that last part, they got everything that they wanted...
The takedown campaign on Johnson ate away at the Tory vote, but it was the economic shockwave from Truss's spectacular detonation which finally sent the corpses floating down the river, and handed the landslide-PM-in-waiting mantle to Starmer.
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