So the General Election campaign continues apace, largely ignored by me and by most of the general public. Most people don't make up their minds during the campaign. But every now and again something emerges which makes one perforce sit up.
Such is the Tory plan for social care. Broadly speaking this involves a charge being placed on your house, and the post-death proceeds being used to pay for your care until there's only £100,000 left. The care system is undoubtedly in crisis, but this isn't the answer and won't, I think, stand. For what it's worth, it's already done immense damage to Tory prospects of a sizeable majority (and given Labour's recent surge, may even stop them winning altogether).
What's wrong with it? It's not fair. Firstly, if you get cancer, the state will pay for your treatment. But not if you get Alzheimers (and not if you don't get either). The welfare state was set up to take some of the consequences of ill-fortune away from the individual. The Tory plan breaches that principle.
Secondly, it makes no allowance for how many children you have. An only child? You get the whole £100,000. Four siblings? That's £25,000 each. Unfair.
It's also a form of sequestration. You may not pay it until after death, but the charge is placed on your property while you're still alive. Your asset is effectively confiscated by the state. This is demeaning to the individual and a retrospective tax on assets acquired many years, perhaps even decades, previously. Moreover this is the confiscation of an asset that you worked hard to secure, with money on which you'd already paid tax.
My own parents lived modest and rather frugal lives, but if they hadn't built up an asset, or if their house had been heavily mortgaged, they would escape the Dementia Tax altogether, unlike someone who'd lived large. To be clear, I'm not short of cash and my future plans don't depend on my inheriting all their property. But I saw them last week, and their distress at the prospect of not being able to pass the bulk of their carefully acquired assets to their sons was palpable. Leaving an inheritance is our final creative human act.
Although there was a lot I didn't like about the Tory manifesto, it did, as you would expect, make some attempt to address head on the many difficult problems Britain faces. Unlike Jeremy Corbyn's pie-in-the-sky fantasies it showed distinct signs of being the work of realists. But if social care is a massive problem, this is not the answer.
Instead, make everyone pay a kind of social insurance against the event that they will need care. You could think of a short, snappy name for it. "Tax", perhaps.
PS Within half an hour of my posting this the Tories had done a U turn on the manifesto policy. "This isn't the answer and won't, I think, stand". I'm often wrong, but in the context these words have a certain ring to them. There would additionally be a cap, unspecified, on how much an individual will have to pay. This doesn't look terribly competent, although to be fair to Mrs May the manifesto did speak of a green paper (a consultation in other words, rather than a policy set in stone) and the contrast with the Labour party is telling - their crap policies remain, unchanged.
Monday 22 May 2017
Friday 12 May 2017
Is Labour now the Stupid Party?
What to make of the General Election campaign, with nearly a month to go?
The Tories have bored us rigid with their "strong and stable" mantra. The press hate it, for it gives them nothing to write about. The Lib Dems are still trying to reverse Brexit. The SNP is struggling with a resurgent Tory party which threatens some of its leading lights in Westminster (has peak SNP already passed? Let's hope so).
And Labour. Oh Labour. Yesterday a draft copy of its manifesto was leaked. Amidst the predictable repeats of socialism's greatest hits, the obvious stand-out fact was that Labour wants a much bigger and more lavishly funded state. It thinks this can be paid for by increased taxation and borrowing. As I've long argued on here, I think they're wrong.
For example, an increase in Corporation Tax, previously prayed in aid by Labour to fund a number of wish-list pledges, is said to bring in £19 billion p.a. So it might, at first. But companies which like the idea of the UK because its Corporation Tax rates are low will be tempted to relocate elsewhere. How much money will be raised after two or three years? Not £19bn. You can raise taxes, yes, but there aren't enough rich people to make a massive difference, and the more you tax wealth creators the fewer incentives there are to do any creating.
Then there's the deficit. Labour is going to borrow a lot more money, it says, but only to invest. But that's what Gordon Brown said too, and he bent the rules to blur the distinction between current and capital spending. Debt is already at about 90% of GDP, and fast approaching the point from which some economists think the state cannot recover (because it ends up paying more in interest than it can afford).
Astonishingly, in view of this, Labour says it wants to reduce the deficit to zero. I doubt this in the same way I doubt the existence of unicorns, but let's say they really do. Unlike the Tories however, Labour wants to reduce the deficit in a rolling five-year window. That's to say, at any point in the future Labour will be able to say, "Our aim is to reduce the deficit to zero within five years from now".
Eh? This is no pledge at all. It is a convenient way of never reducing the deficit to zero, on a par with St Augustine's "Please make me chaste, Lord. But not yet".
If this is the high point of Labour's financial stupidity, it is surpassed for naivety by the promise that in Brexit negotations (and Labour still doesn't seem to have fully committed to respecting the referendum result) it will under no circumstances walk away from talks without a deal. So picture the scene. Mr Corbyn is offered terms by M Barnier. Corbyn doesn't like them. He offers other terms. "Non", says Barnier. What does Corbyn do then? He has already told the EU a bad deal is better than no deal. What is his response? He has none.
I put this to my wife, who, I'm afraid, said, "Well perhaps that'll send out a signal to the EU that we'll negotiate in good faith and we can reach a deal which suits both sides". For me this is equivalent to the rabbit promising under no circumstances to kick the stoat.
I have long resisted the notion that the Labour party is finished as an electoral force. I remember people said the Tories were finished after 1997. A big difference between the two however is that the Tories, like them or loathe them, are dominated by quite clever and pragmatic people with experience in business or law. Labour on the other hand is full of people who passionately want to make the world a better place and would rather not sully their hands with the tedious details of whether and how that could be accomplished.
I seriously wonder whether, if the Tories are the Nasty Party, Labour is now the Stupid Party. I look at the nomination and election of Corbyn, the elevation of John McDonnell and (the innumerate and under-prepared) Diane Abbott, the see-sawing over Brexit, the anti-semitism row which ended with the ennoblement of Shami Chakrabarti, now the leaked manifesto, and I think to myself, "Perhaps these people are just a bit thick."
Take another manifesto promise - to ban unpaid internships. A good idea in theory, but in practice? Its only effect would be to drive internships underground. You may not be able to advertise any more, but what's to stop you ringing your friend in law, accountancy, advertising, architecture and so on? "Tamsin is seriously considering the profession and would really like to come in and shadow you for a few days. No need to pay her. I'll sub her a few quid for lunch and travel". The only impact of a Corbyn ban would be to confine internships to the well-connected and affluent. At least now everyone gets to work for nothing.
It's tempting to say that all this stupidity is all the fault of a few hard-Left activists; but, sadly, Corbyn, McDonnell et al are the people who were elected by the generality of Labour supporters. These are the pudding-headed individuals that those most keen on the Labour party elevated to its very highest reaches. They are the Labour party in excelsis. They are the fullest and best-realised expression of what Labour is like.
This isn't to say that the party doesn't have any clever people. There are always outliers. But if Labour loses, and if a new party is formed, it will be the clever people who do the breaking away. Labour will become the political wing of Momentum. Then it really will be finished.
The Tories have bored us rigid with their "strong and stable" mantra. The press hate it, for it gives them nothing to write about. The Lib Dems are still trying to reverse Brexit. The SNP is struggling with a resurgent Tory party which threatens some of its leading lights in Westminster (has peak SNP already passed? Let's hope so).
And Labour. Oh Labour. Yesterday a draft copy of its manifesto was leaked. Amidst the predictable repeats of socialism's greatest hits, the obvious stand-out fact was that Labour wants a much bigger and more lavishly funded state. It thinks this can be paid for by increased taxation and borrowing. As I've long argued on here, I think they're wrong.
For example, an increase in Corporation Tax, previously prayed in aid by Labour to fund a number of wish-list pledges, is said to bring in £19 billion p.a. So it might, at first. But companies which like the idea of the UK because its Corporation Tax rates are low will be tempted to relocate elsewhere. How much money will be raised after two or three years? Not £19bn. You can raise taxes, yes, but there aren't enough rich people to make a massive difference, and the more you tax wealth creators the fewer incentives there are to do any creating.
Then there's the deficit. Labour is going to borrow a lot more money, it says, but only to invest. But that's what Gordon Brown said too, and he bent the rules to blur the distinction between current and capital spending. Debt is already at about 90% of GDP, and fast approaching the point from which some economists think the state cannot recover (because it ends up paying more in interest than it can afford).
Astonishingly, in view of this, Labour says it wants to reduce the deficit to zero. I doubt this in the same way I doubt the existence of unicorns, but let's say they really do. Unlike the Tories however, Labour wants to reduce the deficit in a rolling five-year window. That's to say, at any point in the future Labour will be able to say, "Our aim is to reduce the deficit to zero within five years from now".
Eh? This is no pledge at all. It is a convenient way of never reducing the deficit to zero, on a par with St Augustine's "Please make me chaste, Lord. But not yet".
If this is the high point of Labour's financial stupidity, it is surpassed for naivety by the promise that in Brexit negotations (and Labour still doesn't seem to have fully committed to respecting the referendum result) it will under no circumstances walk away from talks without a deal. So picture the scene. Mr Corbyn is offered terms by M Barnier. Corbyn doesn't like them. He offers other terms. "Non", says Barnier. What does Corbyn do then? He has already told the EU a bad deal is better than no deal. What is his response? He has none.
I put this to my wife, who, I'm afraid, said, "Well perhaps that'll send out a signal to the EU that we'll negotiate in good faith and we can reach a deal which suits both sides". For me this is equivalent to the rabbit promising under no circumstances to kick the stoat.
I have long resisted the notion that the Labour party is finished as an electoral force. I remember people said the Tories were finished after 1997. A big difference between the two however is that the Tories, like them or loathe them, are dominated by quite clever and pragmatic people with experience in business or law. Labour on the other hand is full of people who passionately want to make the world a better place and would rather not sully their hands with the tedious details of whether and how that could be accomplished.
I seriously wonder whether, if the Tories are the Nasty Party, Labour is now the Stupid Party. I look at the nomination and election of Corbyn, the elevation of John McDonnell and (the innumerate and under-prepared) Diane Abbott, the see-sawing over Brexit, the anti-semitism row which ended with the ennoblement of Shami Chakrabarti, now the leaked manifesto, and I think to myself, "Perhaps these people are just a bit thick."
Take another manifesto promise - to ban unpaid internships. A good idea in theory, but in practice? Its only effect would be to drive internships underground. You may not be able to advertise any more, but what's to stop you ringing your friend in law, accountancy, advertising, architecture and so on? "Tamsin is seriously considering the profession and would really like to come in and shadow you for a few days. No need to pay her. I'll sub her a few quid for lunch and travel". The only impact of a Corbyn ban would be to confine internships to the well-connected and affluent. At least now everyone gets to work for nothing.
It's tempting to say that all this stupidity is all the fault of a few hard-Left activists; but, sadly, Corbyn, McDonnell et al are the people who were elected by the generality of Labour supporters. These are the pudding-headed individuals that those most keen on the Labour party elevated to its very highest reaches. They are the Labour party in excelsis. They are the fullest and best-realised expression of what Labour is like.
This isn't to say that the party doesn't have any clever people. There are always outliers. But if Labour loses, and if a new party is formed, it will be the clever people who do the breaking away. Labour will become the political wing of Momentum. Then it really will be finished.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)