Labour's post-war failings

 A recent post outlines the many failings of the UK's post- war Conservative governments.  A friend suggests that, in fairness, I should construct a similar list for Labour.  Although I suspect he is a former Tory supporter, he speculated that the list would be shorter.  It is (though I'm open to suggestions for additions), though largely a list of missed opportunities rather than deliberate errors.

1.    1.  Over-centralisation in creating and in running of nationalised industries.

2.     2. Antagonism towards employee representation on the boards of both publicly and privately-owned industries.  This came largely from the unions, who preferred to preserve their monopoly of negotiating with the employers, thus preserving conflict rather than generating co-operation.

3.    3. Disastrous partition of India at independence. Perhaps this was not so much the responsibility of the Labour Government, but rather the cumulation of the policies of “divide and rule” carried out by Imperial governments over the decades, in generating antagonism between previously happily co-habiting Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and other faith groups.  Labour were , however, "in charge" at the time.

4.    4. Failure to participate in the setting up of European Coal and Steel Community, Common Market, (Gaitskell’s “1000 years of history” speech,) Harold Wilson’s “re-negotiation”, ambivalence to EU membership in the referendum - and counting. .

5.    5. Failure to devalue in 1964.  Instead, fighting to preserve the $US/£ exchange rate at $2.80 to £1.  Hence the plan to build a “New Jerusalem” was unnecessarily constrained  by a constant battle to balance external payments. Defeat followed in 1967 when the £1 was devalued to $2.40.  Under Mrs Thatcher it actually reached parity (£1=$1) but Tories prefer not to mention that.  It now bumps along at around £1=$1.20.  So much for World Beating Britain over the last half century.

6.    6. Continued failure to promote co-operation rather than conflict in  industrial relations (“In Place of Strife”  reform proposals, again largely scuppered by the trade unions.)

7.    7. Blair/Brown Governments’ failure to use their massive majorities to achieve:

a)    Substantial devolution (eg home rule with tax-raising powers) to Scotland and Wales;

b)    Electoral reform;

c)     Devolution of more powers to English regions or local government;

d)    Democratically elected second chamber;

e)    Reform of company law to include responsibilities to community and employees as well as profits for share-holders.

8.    8. PFI.  This scheme for enticing the private sector to fund public projects (hospitals, schools) was actually introduced by John Major’s Conservative government, but used extensively by the Blair/Brown governments in a rather naïve  attempt to make the public accounts look healthier.  Ministers and public officials were not very competent at negotiating contracts, the private sector took them for a ride, and  many public projects are now being forced to pay for themselves several times over.

9.    9. The Iraq War.

1   10. The infamous Miliband-approved mug:” Controls on Immigration: I’m voting Labour.”  A shameful attempt by Labour to undersell even the Tories on this issue.  It was pleasing to see in yesterday’s paper that Scouts in Kent are designing  and sending  “Welcome to Britain” greetings cards to migrants landing on their county’s shores.  One lad encourages them to “try the fish and chips.”

1111. Austerity proposals in the 2010 election which rivalled those of the Tories. Here's some exact quotes from their manifesto (page 6):

TTTough  choices for £15billion efficiency savings  in 2010-11;

toTough choices  on cutting government overheads;

toTough choices on pay: action to control public sector pay;

TTTough choices on spending;

TTTough choices on welfare. . . .£1.5 billion on savings being delivered.

1112.Failure to support the Liberal Democrats’ Coalition proposals for;

a) Electoral reform

b) Reform of the House of Lords.

Helping the eaters or heaters

 Since the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 it has been accepted in Britain that it is the duty of the government to ensure, if not a comfortable, at least a minimum quality of life for those citizens who would otherwise be destitute. The 17th century central government craftily passed the responsibility, and the onus of paying for it, on to what passed for local government at the time.  Today it is seen as largely a central government responsibility.

The coming winter will bring a genuinely unprecedented* situation in which  many individuals and families will be forced towards destitution when the effects of double-digit inflation and the huge rise in energy costs are felt.

I feel that the proposals made so far by both government and opposition parties  are clumsy and inadequate.  The existing government has offered every household a grant of £400 to help pay the increased fuel charges.  With fuel price rises in the £1 000s that is peanuts in the context of "just managing" wages, and the rise in the prices of other essentials.  Liz Truss flip-flops between "no-handouts" along with tax cuts which will allegedly stimulate the economy, and the possibility of "maybe" (but unspecified ) handouts.  The Liberal Democrats and Labour have both proposed a freeze on the autumn price cap.  (The Liberals got in first but Labour has received most publicity.)

None of these proposals really tackle the problem.

My proposal is for much more substantial, but targetted, government help to the poorest.  

 I know the Labour Party is, with good reason, opposed to targetting because it involves means testing, which can be both unfair  and humiliating.  Be that as it many, I feel it is foolish, at a time when our health services, care services, education and children's services and most local government services are desperate for additional funding, and there will be inevitable demands for increased provision for the armed forces,to scatter government money on people like me, and many other much, some very much, richer who can cope with the price increases perfectly well. 

For a start I would restore the social credit "uplift" by at least the original  £20, and preferably £30 or even £40, and increase all social security payments other than pensions by the rate of inflation plus 5%.

Then I would give lump sum assistance (say £200 per month) to everyone whose income is so low that they are not liable to pay income tax.  In that way the hassle and humiliation of means testing is avoided.

The basic rate tax threshold  is a  rough and ready measure, but it is one that already  exists.  There is also the problem of "sudden death" at the margin.  Perhaps those who pay income tax only at the standard rate could receive a  reduced sum, such as £50 a month.  A proportion  of the cost could be financed by stopping the payment of the Winter Fuel Allowance to pensioners such as me, whose pension are sufficient to make us liable to income tax, so we don't need the extra help.  One of my more affluent friends calls it his "winter wine allowance."

As outlined in previous posts, there are plenty of assets and activities the effective taxation of which would not unduly affect demand and sustainable growth (land, profits, capital gains, inheritances, financial transactions, windfall taxes.)

The above figures are off the top of my head and uncosted, but are offered as a suggestion.  A government anxious to protect its citizens from penury would order the Treasury to start work now on this or similar schemes, ready for implementation before the cold weather sets in.

* Throughout the pandemic minister after minister excused their importance by claiming the situation to be unprecedented. It wasn't.  The Cygnus exercise predicted almost exactly such a situation but its findings were ignored.  The fuel price rise along with double digit inflation does, however, merit the adjective, certainly for peacetime.  Some have called it a "humanitarian crisis," the sort of situation for which a Churchill would have called for "Action this day."

A Miscellany*

I've been away on holiday (Anglo-French hiking around Chichester followed by visiting  long-standing friends near Margate) for a couple of weeks, hence no posts.  However, here are a few random thoughts on what I've gathered from such of the news I've caught.

 Liz Truss is so awful that I find myself willing Rishi Sunak to do well in the debates and interviews (in some of which Truss is too chicken to participate.) 

Sadly we need to remember that Sunak is not only a lightweight (see previous comments on his Chancellorship) but also without backbone.  His predecessor as Chancellor resigned rather than accept Johnson's demand that the Treasury should sack its advisors and rely on those in Downing Street.  Good for Javid.  No person of principle would have accepted the job under those conditions.  But Sunak did.

Liz Truss promises that under her premiership entrepreneurial economic energies will be released and all sorts of wonderful prospects will eventuate as a result of growth.  That myth, if not as old as the hills. goes back at least to Harold Wilson at the opposite end of the political spectrum He promised us that under socialist planning a healthy, caring and  prosperous state  would emerge and wouldn't cost us a penny (real pennies in those days): It  would be financed out of growth.  There are two problems with Truss's policy.  First  there is no lever to pull that will produce wondrous growth in the short run - but poverty-stricken households need help to eat, and heat thee homes, this winter, not is some golden decade in the future.  Secondly, she may be right in the long run,  maybe even before  we're all dead, but additional growth based on additional consumption is gong to exhaust the planet's finite resources and make it uninhabitable, as is evidenced by fires in France, floods in Australia and aridity in Africa, to name but some.

Yet, following on form that last point, both Truss and Sunak cheerfully advocate undoing such modest measures as we have to alleviate  global heating.  Truss would abandon the Green Levy and Sunak reduce the VAT on fuel.  Such short-termism is now totally unacceptable.  As Truss said in another context THIS-IS-A-DISGACE.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj49CogLemQ)

 

  In the Guardian on the 10th August George Monbiot  quoted  some interesting facts about our water industry: not a single new reservoir has been commissioned since privatisation in 1989;  the distribution system leaks at the rate of  2.4bn litres per day on current estimates; untreated sewage is poured into our rivers on a regular basis; rather than fix these problems the companies have distributed £72 billion (that's billions, not mere millions,) into the bank accounts of their shareholders.

I don't have any figures to hand, but I suspect much the same can be said of oil industry, as for years it has cheerfully denied that its product has anything to do with the climate crisis (much as the tobacco companies  denied that there is any connection between smoking and lung cancer.  In Africa one of the most popular cigarette brands was called "Life." )

The use of food banks has increased, is increasing and ought to be not so much diminished as eliminated.  In addition we are now reduced to the humiliation of having to create "warm banks" to which we may retreat  when they can no longer afford to heat our homes.  THIS-IS-A DISGRACE.

The reality is that the economic model touted by the Tories, based on the "trickle down effect"** does not adequately serve the needs of a significant proportion of our population. A tiny proportion - 0.1%, 1% or maybe even 10% -  do very well indeed out of it.  The vast bulk of us live very comfortably indeed, taking as normal luxuries (foreign holidays, designer clothes if you like that sort of thing, meals out, centrally heated houses, separate bedrooms of the kids, arts and entertainment, gadgetry galore) beyond the wildest dreams of our grandparents and even, for some of us,  our parents.  But a bottom 20% to 25% are constantly on the breadline, tempted into unaffordable debt, and some can't manage at all without recourse to food banks and, coming shorty, warm banks.  THIS-IS-A-DISGRACE.  As still one of the richest society in the world we need to be devising  ways  of sharing our incomes and wealth more equitably.  The candidates for the Tory leadership are offering the opposite.

Conservatives, including both leadership candidates,  like to indicate  that  their inhuman and possibly illegal policy towards refugees is aimed at combatting  "the evil business of people smuggling."  Hmm?  If that were the case then the easiest and quickest way to do it would be to set up booths on the coast of France, or wherever else potential migrants are gathering, with banners saying "Welcome to Britain."  I forget which European crisis it was which  produced a lot of refugees at an airport, and an assertive woman, probably from the WVS or something similar,announced in commanding tones: "Those who wish to come to Britain follow me!" and marched them on to a nearby RAF transport.  Whoever they were will have contributed considerably to our prosperity and diversity.   The comfortable and ageing Conservatives who form the electorate for our next prime minister might like to ponder how much these  and similar migrants have contributed to their comforts.  But they won't read about it in the Daily Mail, the Sun or the Express.

*Very old readers may remember this as the heading for a Guardian column.

**  Shorthand for  cutting taxes and scrapping regulations to release the energies of entrepreneurs and the resulting employment opportunities will eventually benefit the lower orders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What the Tories have done to us.

 As the two contenders for the Tory leadership engage in a race to the bottom in terms of honesty, relevance and decency, my friend John Cole, a fellow former teacher of Economics who served for 14+ years as a Liberal Democrat on Bradford Metropolitan Council, and I decided to put together a list of mistaken Tory policies which have  been implemented in our lifetimes.  We started with an aim of about a dozen, but the list grew longer and longer.  My apologies, therefore, that this post is somewhat longer than usual.  John is relatively youthful so the first item was not in his lifetime.

  NHS. Bitterly opposed its creation in 1947. They were not, of course, in power, but it’s worth remembering this when, now that it is a “National Treasure,” they claim to support it while looking for ways to privatise more and more of it.

EUROPE.  Failed to participate in the setting up of the Coal and Steel Community in 1952, and then the EEC in 1957.  There were lengthy delays before we joined the ERM and when we did so it was at an unrealistic rate, leading to our being humiliatingly forced out on Black Wednesday in 1992.

SUEZ.  The ignominious failure of this venture in 1956 was a clear illustration that Britain was no longer a 19^th century- style Great Power capable of independent international action.

MAU MAU UPRISING (KENYA).  The brutal treatment of Africans fighting for independence demonstrates that the empire was not always the avuncular institution  we like to pretend.  In particular the failure of the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox- Boyd, to take responsibility for the Hola Camp Massacre (1959) and resign from his post, was an early breach of the constitutional conventions which have become so frequent in recent years.  Maybe the beginning of the end of the “good chap theory of government.”

BLUE STREAK.  Untold millions were spent on this attempt to build an intermediate range ballistic missile to deliver Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent.  After its cancellation in 1960 we’ve borrowed an American one: how independent is that?

PRIVATISATION.   The selling- off of public assets at knock-down prices in the hope of creating a share-holding (and Tory voting) democracy.  Most of the shares are now in the hands of hedge-funds etc. and many of the utilities are now owned by foreign companies, even some governments.

RIGHT TO BUY. Similarly, the selling of the social housing stock to tenants in the hope that they became Tory-voting owner-occupiers.  Over 40% of the stock sold is now in the hands of buy-to-let landlords.

DEREGULATION.  Regulations are rules it is the duty of any government to make to protect us from chancers, charlatans and bullies. Here are just two consequences. The abolition of the Parker Morris standards for houses in 1980 means that typical newly-built dwellings in the UK are barely half the size of new Greek or Danish homes. The failure to supervise and check on such standards as still exist has contributed to such tragedies as the Grenfell Fire (2017) and 71 deaths.

THE BIG BANG AND TAX HAVENS.  Financial deregulation has opened the door to increased tax avoidance and financial opportunism.  Londongrad has become a repository for funds from questionable sources.

THE FALKLANDS WAR.  The withdrawal of HMS Endurance from the South Atlantic gave a signal which the Argentine government took to mean the UK would no longer defend the Falkland Islands.  The ensuing war (1982) cost nearly 900 lives, mostly semi-trained young Argentinians.

SECTION 28. This series of laws across Britain prohibited the alleged  "promotion of homosexuality" by local schools and authorities.  It was in effect from 1988 to 2000 in Scotland and from 1988 to 2003 in England and Wales. 

THE POLL TAX.  An attempt to ensure that everyone paid for local services, even if they hadn’t any money.  It was introduced in Scotland  in 1989 and England and Wales in1990.  It proved unpopular and unworkable, led to the defenestration of Mrs Thatcher and was replaced by banded council taxes in 1993.  Since then no government has dared to re-evaluate the bands.

EMASCULATION OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES.  This has continued steadily under both Conservative and Labour governments. UK government has become more centralised and local authorities increasingly merely agents of the centre with very limited powers to act or raise taxes independently.

AUSTERITY.  Since 2010 the reduction in real terms of expenditure on all public services, including the NHS, leading to lengthy hospital waiting lists, a backlog in the courts, a barely functioning care service for the elderly, and the services provided by local authorities, including child protection, pared to a minimum. Spending on social security for those in poverty has been cut by 25%. The Bedroom Tax and the Two Child Limit indicate a vindictive attitude to struggling families.

THE HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT. Refugees from discrimination, persecution and torture are entitled in international law to apply for asylum in countries they consider safe.  The hostile environment created by Mrs May when she was Home Secretary,  continued since then and now including deportation to Rwanda,  is callous, inhumane and probably illegal.

FAILURE TO TAKE CLIMATE CRISIS SERIOUSLY .  Former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson has been a leading climate change denier.  Of the two current candidates for the leadership of the party, Rishi Sunak reduced the VAT on petrol and Liz Truss proposes to drop the Green Levy.

HOUNDING OF THE BBC. The BBC is almost universally  respected as  “the best in the World and the envy of the World” but the Tories are constantly sniping at it and threatening its financial independence.  Funding has been cut by some 30% since 2010.  The commercially funded public service broadcaster Channel 4 has also proved highly successful in providing investigative news and adventurous drama and is now also under threat.

LIES IN THE REFERENDUM FOR ELECTORAL REFORM.  The Coalition Agreement of 2010 gave the impression that the Conservatives would remain neutral in the referendum campaign, but in fact they campaigned against it and poisoned it with misinformation.

ACADEMISATION OF SCHOOLS.  (ongoing since 2010).  In practice, privatisation. Among other abuses, hectares of playing fields have been sold off for private profit.

BREXIT.  (Referendum 2016)  An abrogation of our opportunities to develop peace and concord in Europe, a reduction in our abilities to influence world politics, and the ability effectively to fight a trade war against ourselves.

EXIT FROM THE CUSTOMS UNION AND SINGLE MARKET.  (January 2021) The Leave Campaign implied that this would not happen, but the ERG faction of the Tory party forced the government to the hardest and most damaging form of quitting the EU.

CUTS IN OVERSEAS AID.  Abandonment of the pledge, written into law, to maintain overseas aid at 0.7% of GDP.  Lest we forget, Rishi Sunak , a candidate for the Tory leadership, was the minister responsible

TWO THREATS TO BREAK INTERNATIONAL LAW.  The Internal Market Act (2020) and the abrogation of the Northern Ireland Protocol (pending). Both smear the UK’s reputation as a pillar of the law-abiding liberal democratic world.

HUMAN RIGHTS.  Respect for these is pilloried as being “woke” and they are now under threat. Our democratic  right to  protest is being seriously limited and our trade union movement has been severely constrained. 

MISMANAGEMENT OF THE COVID PANDEMIC.  (2020 and continuing); following the failure to implement the key recommendations of the Cygnus Exercise (2016) on how to be prepared for a predicted health pandemic.  

INTERFERENCE WITH THE FRANCHISE.  Second preference voting, where it existed, removed, and pictorial evidence needed for voter identification.  The Electoral Commission made subject to government control.

 

If that's not enough this earlier post examines in more detail the myth of Tory  economic competence.

 https://keynesianliberal.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-myth-of-tory-economic-competance.html

 

 

 

Tory leadership: Thatcher-plus or Johnson-lite

 David Steel once said of Margaret Thatcher: " I wish I were as certain of just one thing as she is of everything."  

 Liz Truss is from the same mold and doesn't even have to pretend.  In her interview on Radio 4 this morning she confined herself to slogans.  She will "Hit the ground running," "Get things done," "Get the economy moving."  

 What she's actually "got done" is short on detail. She claims "the Australian trade deal," though on "Farming Today" earlier we were told that Britain's farmers are up in arms about it and  feel they have been sold down the river.  She also claimed to have the "Led the West" in organising  support for the defence of Ukraine, though her boss  P.M. Johnson also claims that role, and  what the rest of the world thinks about British leadership in anything other than boasting is not known.  (Since Suez we have mostly cravenly followed the US, the main exception being Harold Wilson, who kept us out of Vietnam)

 Like Mr Johnson, M/s Truss  has an uncertain relationship with the truth, as her trashing of her Roundhay School, which has a highly respectable reputation and serves one of the poshest parts of Leeds, for having such low expectations that all she achieved was a place at Merton College Oxford.

It is said that, traditionally  when Tory Constituency  Selection Committees were   interviewing potential parliamentary candidates they were really choosing young men who would make good sons-in law.  Rishi Sunak fills this bill: he is highly personable, of presentable  appearance, smiles a lot and can string two sentences together without too many ominous pauses.  Although his style is different, he offers  the same as Mr Johnson: persuasive communication skills.

 However, as an earlier post argues, his record as Chancellor of the Exchequer is a poor one.  His furlough scheme was later, shorter and less generous that those of the French and Germans. His "Bounce Back" loan scheme was subject to massive fraud (and M/s Truss claims she told him) and his help to the poor was niggardly and too soon abandoned. 

Although he had the sense to raise taxes to pay for his carelessness and profligacy, he chose the wrong ones; in particular the NICs, a tax on employment, the last thing one should tax when we need to to stimulate an economic recovery.

M/s Truss remained  a wiling collaborator in the Johnson debacle to the end, and Mr Sunak to the last forty-eight hours (or was it twenty-four?)  They are both complicit in the years of Tory misrule.

 Historians  might be able to pinpoint a time when the nation was faced with an even  greater poverty of choice, but I think we have plumber the depths.

Has Labour a death wish?

Amid all the contrived excitement of the competition for the Tory leadership (which doesn't really matter becasue they're all Tories and they're all wrong) yesterday's most important political development seems to have escaped most of the media's notice.

it is, in a small item on page 2 of the Guardian, that Sir Keir Starmer has ruled out any deal with the Liberal Democrats. This is interpreted as no coalition after the next election, and no "confidence and supply" arrangement  either.  Nor with the SNP.  

Labour will go it alone, or not at all.

Starmer's reasoning is easy to understand.  Without such a committed declaration he fears the the Tory PR machine will use the threat of a "coalition of chaos" to defeat Labour.  it is understood that a similar ruse helped prevent Labour under Ed Milliband from winning in 2015

I believe Starmer is profoundly wrong.  Again and again Labour die-hards  believe that they can win on their own and so won't sully their precious ideals by compromise with  others.  Maybe that made sense in the last century, though I doubt if serious history would support it.  The Wartime three-party coalition had its faults but it did its bit towards wining the war.  The much maligned Lib/Lab pact arranged between Jim Callaghan and David Steel achieved the only period of government in the 1970s era in which both the level of inflation and unemployment fell together.

Even in this century, the 2010-15 Coalition, though profoundly  misguided in its economic policy (see contemporary posts on this blog|) filled the bill that was thought to be necessary at the time.  In 2010 it was widely (though in my view wrongly) believed that the country desperately needed a stable government with a working majority, or there would be a run on sterling.  So we got the stable government, largely but understandably on Tory terms (they had 300+ MPs, we had 57).  

And  since 2015, without the moderating influence of the Liberal Democrats, Tory governments  have been profoundly worse.

Current opinion polls show Labour in a modest lead over the Conservatives, but for Labour to be confident of victory that lead needs to be 20 percentage point or more over a sustained period.

The Tories, with their massively sportive press and slick PR machine, are good at recovering.  Witness their victory under Macmillan in 1959 after the Eden's Suez disaster, and John Major's unexpected victory after the Thatcher years.   They have not lost the knack.  

What ever the result of the leadership election, the new leader will be burnished as a combination of St Peter, or the Virgin Mary, with the Archangel Gabriel (despite the male name I think angels are gender neutral) and the appalling  errors of the May-Johnson period will be nothing to do with the new and oh- so- wonderful management team.

And, Sir Keir, they'll probably get away with it.

But there remains a "progressive majority" of voters.  We are highly unlikely ever to get a government as incompetent, dishonest  and corrupt as the present one.  We should seize the moment,combat predictions of a "coalition of chaos" with the rejoinder  that nothing could be as chaotic as Johnson's Tory-UKIP coalition,  and, leaving all post-election options  open, allow the progressive parties to campaign  with minimum hindrance in the areas where they can prevail.

Tory Hopefuls: none of the above

I am currently stricken with COVID and haven't the energy to keep bang up to date with the latest developments, but understand the number of contenders for the Tory leadership is now in double figures.  

Rishi Sunak is currently the "bookies' favourite."  He's certainly a very personable chap and could easily win, just as Mr Johnson did, by displaying a personality that appears attractive to Tory MPs and party members.  But, although Mr Sunak's character is probably not as flawed as Johnson's (a difficult man to beat on this rating)  his performance in office as Chancellor was very weak.  He raised taxes to pay for social care, which was honest and necessary,  but the tax he chose, National Insurance, was about the worst possible, in that  it is both a  tax on employment (a "good" which we want to encourage) ant takes demand out of the circular flow at  a time when we want to encourage it.   

He is praised  for his "furlough scheme" but I believe it was less generous and more short-lived than some continental schemes which were introduced earlier and lasted longer.  Its administration was subject to significant fraud, dwarfed only by  the fraud surrounding his £47bn "Bounce Back Loans" scheme, much of which went to non-existent  "business."   An his "eat out to help out" was a silly subsidy to those who  were able to afford to eat out anyway, which probably helped to spread the virus.

Be that as it may, the competition seems to centre round which of the contestants can make the most credible offer on tax cuts.

Are they mad?

Did they not live through the pandemic.(some of us are still living through it, with perhaps more to follow).

What has happened to the increased realisation the pandemic  engendered that we really are "all in this together," that we need to care for, help and take responsibility for each other, and that the state is the instrument best  equipped to administer that care.

It is significant that the one success for which the government can legitimately boast in the pandemic, the vaccine distribution, was carried out by the public sector state-funded NHS.  The bungles, the £37bn spent on the ineffective Test and Trace system , the belated purchasing of personal protective equipment, to name but two , were  all the responsibility of the private sector.

In our society,  still one of the richest in the world, one fifth of our people exist in poverty. Even before the predicted inflation reaches its zenith, many families are unable to cope with essential expenses for housing , energy, warmth  (though today that is on free offer) and food..  At the same time four fifths of us, including me, are materially living the life of Riley, taking former luxuries for granted, with not a financial care in the world, and the top tenth are receiving, though not necessarily enjoying,  incomes beyond eventhe most avaricious dreams. .

This is intolerable.

We need to pay more tax, not less.

The IFS tells us that in Britain the percentage of GDP taken in tax is 33%, below the G7 average of 36%, and way below that in our neighbours Germany (39%) and France (45%)

We need to redistribute our  national income and wealth in such a way that  no-one (no-one, not even the feckless) falls below  a minium civilised level of physical existence, and adequately  fund the civilised essentials : our health service, our care service, legal service, education  and  our local government services.

We desperately need some politicians with the courage to tell us this. (Are you listening, Sir Keir and Sir Ed?)

 The chosen tax increases should be those  which  least affect affect current economic activity, which we want to encourage.  There are plenty options: inheritance taxes, capital gains, profits, land, financial transactions, to name just some

 Do not be deceived by the convenient idea that cuts in taxes will somehow generate enterprise  and growth, which will obviate the need for the comfortable to pay just a little bit more. That is a nonsense, described in a Guardian leader (11/07/22) as " an elaborate ruse to benefit the rich."*

Yet that is the comfortable myth the Tory contenders are trying to sell, and I suspect it will go down well with their well-heeled MPs and members.

 For the record, at present I'd go for Tom Tugendhat as the nearest to what's left of the "One Nation" tradition.

But it won't much matter if the progressive parties have the courage to grasp the nettle of what we stand for and proclaim it loudly and clearly.

*Added 13/07/22