Author Archives: Daniel Henry

Daniel Henry

We need a positive EU campaign and we need it now

By Daniel Henry | Sat 11th June 2016 - 12:25 pm

We’re in danger of losing the EU campaign. We’re making the same mistakes we made in the AV and Scottish Independence referenda and if we don’t turn things around we could find ourselves losing Europe.

The Remain campaign seems to have worked with the assumption that if we present the facts then people will believe and make their decision based on their facts, but unfortunately it just isn’t so simple.

For one, people have no idea of what the facts actually are. The Leave campaign have been extremely effective at casting doubt on any facts they disagree with. The conspiracy theories they come up with may sometimes sound daft, but they resonate with anyone who has come to distrust the political ‘establishment’.

Furthermore, emotion plays a big part in how we decide things. The Leave side have run a very emotive campaign, making effective use of fear (immigrants!!) and hope (unshackled we can do anything!!)

The Remain campaign, in comparison, have only really played to fears (economic ruin!!) and has assumed that because their scare stories are more factual that that will win it. (I saw more factual but even our side has exaggerated and twisting things)

The Remain campaign has lacked a positive message to go alongside the negative message and it desperately needs one!

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 48 Comments
Daniel Henry

ALTER Questions the Leadership Candidates
 on the Land Value Tax and Economic Reform

By Daniel Henry | Sun 5th July 2015 - 10:50 am

ALTER is an Associated Organisation within the Liberal Democrats dedicated to advancing the causes of the Land Value Tax and other economic reforms. We chose to use the leadership contest as an opportunity.

We are aware that party policy is not determined by the leader, it is instead determined democratically by members at federal conferences. However, it is our experience that the leader has a large amount of influence in terms of which policies are given priority. So although motions and amendments on the Land Value Tax have been regularly passed at conference with near unanimity, the party has largely been quite shy about the policy, leaving it hidden within the small print of our manifesto rather than properly campaign on it.

For this reason we wished to challenge both leadership candidates as to whether they’d be willing to grasp the nettle and get seriously behind LVT, and also take their view on other areas of economic reform including workplace democracy and monetary policy.
We sent our questions and their responses are below.

Land Value Tax

Whenever the Land Value Tax has been debated at a Liberal Democrat conference, support for it is almost unanimous. While the party has consistently supported introducing the Land Value Tax, it has in recent years been highly shy about it. ALTER had to fight for it to even make the small print in our manifesto.

As leader, would you be willing to grasp the nettle and make it a front and centre policy?

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Daniel Henry

Introducing ALTER

By Daniel Henry | Mon 25th May 2015 - 1:30 pm

ALTER logoNew members have been asking about Lib Dem organisations that they can join.  You are welcome to submit similar items on behalf of other organisations.

Do you think we should tax wealth rather than work? That regressive taxes like Council Tax should be replaced with a progressive tax on landowners instead? Do you agree with the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Mirrlees Review that “the economic case for taxing land itself is very strong”?

If so, have you considered joining ALTER?

Last week, new member Simon Gilbert wrote a piece in which he described himself as a Georgist and declared his support for the land tax. Feeling like we had discovered one of our own, ALTER contacted the LDV team, asking them to introduce us to Simon.

The LDV team not only passed our message to Simon, (who has since joined us) but also invited us to introduce ourselves more widely to the LDV readership. So this is a short piece to introduce who we are, what we stand for, what we’re trying to achieve, and why you may wish to join us!

ALTER – Action for Land Tax and Economic Reform

ALTER is an Associated Organisation within the Lib Dems that focuses on economic reform, with particular focus on the land value tax. The land value tax is a long time Liberal policy, the one that led to the showdown between Lloyd George and the Tory House of Lords with the People’s Budget in 1909. On our website there is a selection of articles that explain the benefits.

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Posted in Lib Dem organisations | Tagged | 33 Comments
Daniel Henry

Opinion: Cabinet Collective Responsibility and why we need to reform it

By Daniel Henry | Tue 17th June 2014 - 5:05 pm

clegg cameron rose gardenA lot has been written over the last few weeks about the coalition, how it has damaged our poll ratings and what we need to do to turn things around. I’d like to put the spotlight on Cabinet Collective Responsibility and how it’s not only damaged our party’s identity but has also helped damage the public’s view of coalitions in general.

Cabinet Collective Responsibility is the convention that members of the government, i.e. ministers, all have to suspend their own opinions and collectively hold the government line. If they want to publicly disagree with the government then they’re expected to resign. This may have made sense when one party ran the government but with a government formed from two different parties, with very differing views and identities, this has predictably caused a number of problems.

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Daniel Henry

Opinion: In defence of consumption taxes

By Daniel Henry | Tue 5th November 2013 - 1:20 pm

MoneyWhenever the “cost of living” comes up as a topic, we often hear lists of consumption taxes that can be reduced to lower it. Most recently have been the green levies on energy bills; last year a big deal was made about fuel duty; the year before it was the top rate of VAT.  Some people even argue that taxes on cigarettes and alcohol hit the poorest and should be cut back.

I’m certain that there’s all sorts of taxes that we’d like to lower, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and any tax we lower requires us to raise another tax or cut spending elsewhere. Wealth taxes, and even a high rate of land value tax, would only raise so much, so if we’re to cut tax then we’re going to have prioritise.

My position is: whichever consumption tax you’d like to reduce, we’d be better off using the revenue to raise the Income Tax and Employee NI thresholds. This is for three reasons:

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Daniel Henry

Opinion: Four suggestions on the future of Lib Dem tax policy

By Daniel Henry | Thu 4th October 2012 - 9:28 am

Last week at conference I attended our consultation on tax policy. As the chair progressed through the paper, it was quite interesting to hear all the opinions put forward on it. I was planning to suggest some ideas for the committee to consider but unfortunately the chapters on corporation tax and financial taxes were left out, and I put my hand up too late to be called in the NIC and Income tax section. So instead, I’ve decided to put the ideas up here for debate instead.

Corporation Tax cuts for paying a Living Wage

Using corporation tax cuts to incentivise desirable business …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 28 Comments
Daniel Henry

Opinion: a request to our boys in the BIS

By Daniel Henry | Tue 22nd May 2012 - 4:21 pm

Every now and then I do something that requires me to provide “proof of address”.

There’s starting a phone contract, applying for security jobs, signing on, etc. For whatever reason these companies need “proof” of my address, either a utilities bill or bank statement and unfortunately for me I struggle to provide it.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 10 Comments
Daniel Henry

Opinion: Could the Lib Dems back a Financial Transaction Tax within the EU?

By Daniel Henry | Mon 14th May 2012 - 12:54 pm

At Spring Conference we passed a tax motion that confirmed our manifesto pledge for support for a global Financial Transaction Tax (FTT).

The implication was that we supported the FTT but only if the entire world agreed. The usual reasoning for this stance is that if we, or Europe, unilaterally institute an FTT it would disadvantage banks within the EU and encourage them to move their operations outside our borders, losing us jobs and …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 22 Comments
Daniel Henry

Opinion: Is it time to rescue education policy from the hands of MPs?

By Daniel Henry | Thu 26th April 2012 - 5:28 pm

When Labour’s shadow minister of education, Stephen Twigg, announced his “Office for Educational Improvement” idea, it was quite well received by many of us. It pushed a lot of our buttons, not least the welcome emphasis on evidence and the idea of protecting educational policy from the whims of politicians with “transient ambitions”.

The question that crossed my mind was how this might be combined with our liberal themes of localism and democracy to improve it further. So to start a debate, here’s a suggestion:

How we might “devolve” educational policy

We could create a council to deal with educational policy. …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 15 Comments
Daniel Henry

Opinion: An attempt to bring a calm and rational solution to the workfare issue

By Daniel Henry | Mon 5th March 2012 - 10:54 am

There’s been a lot of controversy around the “workfare” issue. However, while individual members have expressed clear opinions on it, our party is yet to take an official stance on the issue. With a policy paper on youth unemployment to be debated this weekend at conference we have an opportunity to decide where we stand on the issue.

I propose that we make the system fairer and ease the controversy by securing the following three compromises from the Tories:

1) Ensuring jobseekers aren’t misled into voluntary work schemes.

Although the scheme is voluntary, many jobseekers report being misled by Job Centres. Some …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 15 Comments
Daniel Henry

Opinion: A suggestion for an amendment to the AV bill

By Daniel Henry | Sat 27th November 2010 - 2:06 pm

This article is easier to follow if you understand how STV and AV works. If you’re not familiar with them, I recommend quickly clicking on the links for explanations.

How STV would clean up politics.
When the electoral reform campaign was for STV, one of the arguments we liked to use was how it would help clean up politics by ending “safe seats”. We call a seat “safe” if it has been held by the same party for a long while and it’s pretty much guaranteed that the candidate who runs for that party will win. This means that some …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 69 Comments
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