Starmer’s Promise To Tax The Rich Was Yet Another Lie
In 2021, the independent Wealth Tax Commission recommended that the government introduced a one-off 1% wealth tax on households with more than £1 million. which they said would generate £260 billion - enough to cover a year’s funding of the NHS and social care spending with billions left to play with.
You see, we don’t need to have a National Health Service on its knees through years of underfunding, we just need politicians with the guts to do something about it.
A tweet from my old friend @ToryFibs caught my eye this week.
“When a politician is offering zero policies to make the world a better place but is in line to be the next Prime Minister you have to ask yourself why he wants the job.
The answer is very simple. Power for power’s sake.”
It’s not unreasonable to feel a tad suspicious of a subservient knight of the realm that is seeking power without actually offering anything of any real use to a vast majority of the British people.
The ideological contortionist Starmer has abandoned countless pledges because he doesn’t have any genuine steadfast principles to back them up with.
Let’s take Labour’s recently abandoned wealth tax pledge.
Keir Starmer’s very first pledge of his now-infamous ten pledges went under the heading of “Economic justice”.
“Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations. No stepping back from our core principles.”
A report from the TUC earlier this month said a modest wealth tax on the richest 140,000 individuals – a minuscule 0.3% of the population – could deliver a £10.4 billion boost for the public purse.
So let us be absolutely clear about Labour’s shameful abandonment of what should have remained a core policy for any Labour government-in-waiting.
This is a political choice. Nobody forced Labour to go down this path. The Labour Party has chosen to side with big business and the 1% over the rest of us.
Starmer’s spinners insist the abandonment of any version of a wealth tax is designed to blunt Tory attacks in the build up to the next general election.
But the Labour Party sits between 20 and 25 points ahead in the polls, right?
Now isn’t the time for opportunistic cowardice, Mr Starmer, now is the time to confront the rampant inequality that slices its way through our little-remaining social fabric.
One Starmer pledge after another has been sacrificed on the altar of perceived pragmatism.
The Labour Party would rather unleash austerity 2.0 on the British people than risk upsetting the super-wealthy 1% and the billionaire media moguls that Starmer’s people are desperately cosying up to.
Rachel Reeves - Blair’s favourite - almost seemed delighted to announce the inevitable ditching of the electorally popular wealth tax - behind a Torygraph paywall.
“I don’t have any spending plans that require us to raise £12 billion. So I don’t need a wealth tax”, said the wife of the DWP supremo Reeves.
£12 billion really isn’t just small change that we find down the back of the national sofa.
£12 billion would pay for free school meals for all primary school pupils for at least the next 6 years.
£12 billion would pay for around 24 brand new flagship NHS hospitals.
£12 billion would pay for around 200,000 brand new social homes, formerly known as council houses.
£12 billion would pay for the disability allowance for 2 million people living with disabilities for around 9 years.
I think you get where I’m coming from here? The Labour Party doesn’t have any plans that require them to raise £12 billion, so why not commit to building 200,000 council houses with the introduction of a modest wealth tax?
It couldn’t be any clearer. Middle manager Starmer doesn’t want to spook the ruling classes, the billionaire media and the wealth-hoarding elite because he doesn’t have a fucking backbone.
Labour’s obsession with debt reduction needs to end and the party has to indicate how they are going to pay for the massive increase in public spending that is needed to produce economic growth.
Starmer’s Labour do not support a 15% pay rise for nurses, they think it's an unrealistic militant union plot, so why don’t they say the same about (not my) King Charles and his recently-awarded obscene 45% pay rise?
The UK’s predominantly right-wing press really are less influential than ever, and a majority of them will always loathe Labour. So why is Keir Starmer trying to court them?
Answer? The Labour Party is now the natural home for Tory-lite boot lickers whose mantra has gone “for the many, not the few”, to “for the 1%, and fuck all for you”, quicker than you can say “will somebody ask Mandelson about his nonce pal Epstein please?”.
It’s worth remembering, it’s not Murdoch that’s knocking on Starmer’s door for an audience with the beige Tory but Starmer’s people trying to kick down Murdoch’s door in the hope of a few positive headlines in a tabloid that’s never been read by so few people.
One Murdoch source is quoted as saying, “we can’t keep him away”, referring to the Labour leader's desperate attempt to seek regular private audiences with the tax shy billionaire.
The abandonment of pledge after pledge certainly tells us what Keir Starmer doesn't stand for, but what does he stand for that isn’t a pale imitation of what the Tories have been forcing down our throats for the past thirteen years?
A wealth tax is not only the sensible thing to do, it is also the morally acceptable thing to do. But it seems morality has no place in today’s Labour Party.
Starmer’s obsession with economic growth would make sense if he knew how to achieve it. Following roughly the same pattern as the Conservatives won’t create growth, but it will create hardship, poverty wages, and a continuing downward spiral for your standard of living.
Despite being a central tenet of neoliberalism, we know that trickle-down economics has failed. Even the US Democrats have ditched trickle-down in favour of targeted aggressive tax rises. Why not you, Keith?
Does creating economic growth really need to be much more complicated than the redistribution of hoarded wealth? If a poor person has money to spend they will spend it.
Starmer has spent the past several years attempting to blow out the candle of hope - and he has had ‘success’ - but it hasn’t made his own shine any brighter, and I don’t think it ever will.
Until next time,
Rachael
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