Levelling Sideways, And not in a Good Way...

 

Is it just me, or are we at a very strange pass in UK politics, right now? We have a Tory government refusing to cut taxes, and a Labour government-in-waiting refusing to raise taxes: what on earth is going on here? On both sides it would seem to be a question of image and a desperate need to appeal to some notion of 'the mainstream' of public opinion, in order to placate as broad a church of voters as possible, whilst not poking the establishment, corporate bear of the markets into hostile action against them. Where this leaves the rest of us remains to be seen: but both tacks could be interpreted as laissez-faire in approach and essentially comparable, and begs the question: what are governments for, if they aren't proactive economically?

The situation that currently obtains is substantially that faced by Marx in the 19th Century: a point made succinctly in this week's New Statesman by Harry Lambert: the UK tax system is still heavily skewed to favouring capital over work. Own wealth, you pay less tax. Work to earn and you pay proportionately more. The trite argument levied by the right in debate on this matter usually follows the lines of '... we have to attract the very best...' and '... the very best will leave in droves if taxation affecting them rises...' As Lambert says in his article, neither case is true: the high-flyers come here because they get paid more handsomely than elsewhere, and they stay put, no matter what, as outlined by a six-year analysis of data trawled from HMRC through a Freedom of Information Act request by one Arun Advani from the University of Warwick, an assistant professor of economics there. It would appear that taxing wealth doesn't necessarily scare the already very wealthy away: they'll always find ways around it anyway.

The upshot, however, is that we still appear to value capital ownership and acquisition over the ultimate generator of that capital: those that actually work for a living. The details and some of the dynamics might have changed since, but the world really doesn't seem to have moved on much from the one observed by Karl Marx over 150 years ago in Das Kapital. I also note an interview in the same issue of the NS with Danny Kruger MP (Conservative), which quotes him as saying that the Left are variously, an "enemy", "parasite", "malignant growth", gnostic (he is after all, an evangelical Christian, so, natch...), "a false faith" (ditto), "a lethal threat", and "dangerous". As an Eton, etc., educated man of not inconsiderable property and capital himself, his views are naturally somewhat in line with who he intrinsically is. But he fears the rumblings at the extreme right of his party and warns of a nascent fascism at work in the undergrowth, and what it might mean for his and our future.

It's such a pity that modern political history seems not to have been taught at his stupidly expensive school, then, isn't it? For in the wind-up to the Third Reich - das tausendjähriges Reich - in the Second World War prologue years of the 1930s; members of Kruger's class, educated at either his, or other such institutions of privilege, flocked to support Adolf Hitler's rise to power, fearing the Left might take what was left of their capital in pursuit of a more equal society. Bear in mind that most of our 'betters' had already frittered away most of what they'd inherited over the centuries, and with a few notable exceptions, had, at that point in time, nary a pot to piss in. I do hope that Starmer and Reeves are playing the long game here, but I imagined that to be the case with Blair, and came away most disappointed from that delusion...

Image blatantly & unashamedly nicked from the NS piece...