I don’t suppose many readers spend much time on the Daily Express. Most people don’t. But a quick glance at yesterday’s editorial rant finds that they have it in for the Lib Dems.
At a time when the tax burden and cost of living are rising and families are being squeezed ever more with each passing day the Lib Dems are fighting the Conservatives not for a tax cut but a tax rise.
This is a reference to the re-emergence of the mansion tax.
Not many Express readers live in £1 million homes. But they aspire to. And just to raise their fears that we’re really out to get them, the article continues:
You can bet your life that if the mansion tax is ever implemented it will soon be extended to £750,000. Then £500,000. Then £250,000. Then all homes.
Mr Cable’s plan is for a tax of around 0.5 per cent of the capital value. Imagine a £250,000 house and being ordered to pay an extra £1,250 a year in tax because Mr Cable thinks you are too wealthy.
And that’s assuming the tax remains at 0.5 per cent, which it won’t: last year’s original pre-election plan was for a 1 per cent rate.
So: think of a number then halve and then halve it again. Then think of a tax rate and double it.
I didn’t come into politics to annoy Daily Express readers. But the fact that the Express is annoyed reminds me why I stay.
It gets better. It looks like bankers hate us too. The Indy claims that Cable (‘It’s That Man Again!’) is ‘at war’ with Osborne over banking reform.
Vince wants to implement ring-fencing straightaway, it seems, while plucky Osborne wants to hold off reform until perhaps after the next General Election – when, the bankers hope, normal mayhem will be restored.
Angela Knight, Chief Executive of the British Bankers’ Association, claims:
We are in for a very difficult autumn. This is therefore the time to concentrate on economic recovery and paying back the Government and the taxpayers. By all means think about new regulation but now is not the time to add that as an overlay with respect to costs, uncertainty or whether it is going to do anything beneficial anyway.
Leaving aside the kneejerk reaction that curtailing bankers’ bonuses might do something ‘with respect to costs’, all you need to remember is why we are in this mess – and how useless banks are at doing their own business.
Does your bank do a good job? Mine could barely manage a simple remortgage deal with itself let alone lend money to a business start up.
The Federation of Small Business appears to agree: ‘We need reform of the banking structure more now than ever.’
So: as we enter September we are hated by the Express, are falling out with the bankers and are on the side of small business.
Reasons to be cheerful indeed.
24 Comments
Yesterday the Express was trumpeting the benefits to home owners of a 21% increase in prices over the next five years. With no mention of the tripling of prices in the noughties, because any comparison would show the increase to be a considerable slowdown, the paper went ballistic with joy: virtually the whole of the front page consisted of excitable quotes from eager estate agents in order to give a headline blazing form the news stands.
Even if I don’t read the Express I’m afraid I can’t help noticing the effect a stonking headline can have on passers-by in newsagents, supermarkets and main line terminals. Further reading infers that all’s well with Grant Schapps’s housing policy; there’s no mention of a projected decline in home ownership, of course, and no mention of the nightmare of high rents and a shortage of housing to get in the way of the “what is hailed as”fantastic” (from an estate agent in Hull) news for the property market” lead story.
Yesterday’s rant about Vince Cable was in fact written by former Daily Express leader-writer, Stephen Pollard, whose most recent strictures in August have been against the breakdown of family life and benefit claimants. I doubt we’ll see one on overpaid bankers, though: “Befit Claimants Still Living In The Lap Of Luxury” begins “After years of hard work, I’m lucky enough to earn a decent salary and to be able to afford to live in a house in a nice suburb of London.” As current editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Mr. Pollard presumably supplements this hard work crafting his prejudices for Daily Express readers knowing these will never be challenged by any other journalist; nor, by the look of the comments online, by any of the readers, many of whom seem to be illiterate.
Coming to think of it, should such people be allowed to vote?
Let’s ask the Daily Express!
the express hates the liberals??? big news. your problem is the guardian is also bashing the lib dems at the moment
In Beaverbrook’s day the Express was a dreadful, illiberal, rag, but it did boast a large staff of journalists at home and abroad. I don’t think it employs many journalists now, so it’s reduced to picking up crumbs and distorting bits of news. At least it was vaguely entertaining when every front page was concerned with how Princess Diana was murdered on the orders of MI5, Tony Blair, Prince Philip or the Dalai Lama.
Let’s not forget which government decided that Richard Desmond was a fit and proper person to own a newspaper.
@Old Codger Chris “Let’s not forget which government decided that Richard Desmond was a fit and proper person to own a newspaper.”
A Green one?
Interesting and somewhat disturbing to see that they are using the same appeal to people’s aspirations which apparently makes millions of people on low incomes in the USA vote against their own interests again and again.
I can’t quite see it working over here. Am I too optimistic?
Their point about mansion taxes is spot on, once something is taxed politicians cannot resist the temptation to increase the taxes – for a good example look at the taxes on flights.
So it might start at 2m but it will then come down and the % tax rates will increase.
Did they manage to link it to Diana’s death in any way?
@Simon McGrath – When you talk of their point about mansion taxes being spot on I assume you mean that of Stephen Pollard, whose own house’s value is almost certainly the rationale for writing the piece. I don’t agree that a mansion tax’s threshold could not be increased – in line with inflation for instance – rather than the opposite which you fear would be the case. The increase in flight taxes argument could be applied to any consumer tax, by the way.
Shortly after last year’s general election I met a delightful woman called Mimi at a party in Barnes. She had been talking to Susan Kramer and informed me that she was definitely going to vote Labour because of the threat of a mansion tax which she feared might be introduced at £1 million and extended to £2 million by the coalition.
Bizarre, but voters have their reasons……
@sean – there is a strong tendency for the scope of taxes and their level to be expanded ( famously of course income tax was introduced on a temporary basis).
Once a new tax has been introduced and the initial hurdle got over then it is much easier to rake in more and more money.
The flight taxes are an excellent example of this – they would never have been brought in at their current levels but have crept up – exactly the same would happen with mansion taxes.
The major error in the Express’s latest pro-house-price-inflation rant and its associated editorial – and also missed by Chris White in this piece – is the suggestion that a new LD property tax, seeking to collect a minute proportion of utterly unearned wealth, is in any way an ADDITIONAL impost.
In all the comments I have read of Vince’s over the last few days, he has been at pains to point out that a new progressive property tax would be part of a tax SHIFT – off productive endeavour via a further rise in income tax thresholds, or as a REPLACEMENT of other unfair / deadweight taxes.
Self-serving rent seekers like those at the Express deliberately ignore such facts. We must not.
A couple of boring details about tax, which so many in the media in particular seem incapable of understanding, or perhaps just decide it is easier to report inaccurately?
At the last General Election the Lib Dem proposal for a mansion tax was for properties of more than £2 million – not £1 million as has so often been reported.
Secondly – and this really is difficult for many people to understand – the top rate of income tax was 40 per cent for the highest earning people in this country for every year of the Labour Government from 1997 to 2010. The 50 per cent tax rate was introduced in April 2010, literally in the last four weeks of the Labour Government. (and just to really scare some people the top rate of income tax was 60 per cent under the first 9 years of the Thatcher Government).
Put another way there has been a significantly higher rate of income tax facing the highest earning people in this country under last 16 months of the coalition Government than there was under the last 13 years of a majority Labour Government.
In addition to so much of the media not being able to accurately report these facts I think both of these facts are hard for many Labour and Conservative activists to accept – admittedly for different reasons.
@Andrew
“is the suggestion that a new LD property tax, seeking to collect a minute proportion of utterly unearned wealth, is in any way an ADDITIONAL impost.”
I’m sorry in what way is a mansion tax a tax on “utterly unearned wealth”? Did all these mansion owners claim squatters rights on other peoples homes?
I also fail to see how a mansion tax would be prevent house price inflation unless it was levied on ordinary homes as well as mansions, which is in fact the article’s allegation. Your attitude rather suggests they may have been right in making it.
Surely the problem isn’t that the Tory press hates you, it’s that many of your former supporters do.
IMc > many of your
Did you post that with some point in mind? (‘Vote Labour,’ presumably?)
Or just for the sheer pleasure of rubbing our noses in it?
At the end of each LibDem Conference, those of us who attend the ‘Glee Club’ invariably sing the old Gladstone-era campaign song “God Gave the Land to the People”. The ‘Mansion Tax’ is a good headline-grabber and could be worthwhile if it was part of a Council Tax reorganisation which made it genuinely progressive – extending to Band Z if need be! However, it was interesting that reports in the Indy referred to Cable and Land Taxation. The ALTER pressure group have long proposed a form of Land Value Taxation, but their arguments seem more based on the narrow economics of the efficient use of ‘spare’ land rather than the wider efficiencies inherent in a less unequal society.
The Consultation paper on Inequality presented to the the Spring Conference in Sheffield contained some striking statistics on Wealth and Inequality, particularly in Chapter 5 and concluded inter alia that “The most radical way to shift the burden of taxation onto unearned wealth would be a land value tax. ….. It would also be difficult to avoid, as land cannot be moved offshore!” I was sorry that the ALTER-sponsored motion on LVT has not been selected for debate in Birmingham, but given Vince’s reported support for the idea, perhaps Policy Committee are already working on it.
It could certainly be an important USP for the Party in 2015 and, although ‘the devil is in the detail’ it could completely replace Council Tax and Stamp Duty, and possibly Inheritance Tax as it applies to fixed property. I shall certainly look forward to hearing more from Vince on the issue. I doubt if Danny Alexander will break ranks from his pal Gideon Osborne on the issue, though……
I do consider the views of the express, the mail and to a lesser extent the Torygraph when considering how good proposed policies are. I find consistently that if they hate them (especially the Mail) I am usually far more likely to support them…..
With print media [I refuse to use newspapers ] like the Express Group the only real danger comes from blaring headlines on newsstands. Anyone who buys it is either doing so for the sports coverage; the crosswords & other puzzles ( which is why my wife buys it on Saturdays [TV supplement as well] & Mondays); or for research, ( I had a colleague once who reckoned that if one scanned the Times, Mail, Guardian & Daily Worker you would get a fair idea of the range of opinion), or to reinforce their prejudices. This last group who may actually READ the Express will not be receptive to any facts or views that run contrary to Express policy lines. One could reasonably predict that every day there will be a bash at immigrants, dole cheats, LibDems, environmentalists, and, of course the EU. So we really don’t have to waste time on it – except for the aforementioned headline issue.
The Express is a newspaper????
@cogload – not yet, but once they get a valuation for Kensington Palace…
Hmmmm ‘hated again’. The liberal democrats are loved by who exactly ?
After the Liberal Democrats let the Conservatives privatise and break up the NHS, ending up with a fragmented, uneven and vastly more expensive and inefficient market based system, the hatred will be permanent. The only hope after that will be re-branding and creating a brand new party .
The Paper thin PR consultation and the change in language doesn’t change what the Conservatives are doing one jot. There will be no savings and more spent on legal fees as the NHS will be open to competition law as per the legal advice in the Guardian. Health economies will be destabilised. Private health companies will make a lot of money at tax payers and sick peoples expense.
I am still in utter shock that the Liberal Democrats are allowing the conservatives to get away it. It will finish the Liberal Democrats as a party and unfortunatly finish the NHS as well.
Flippant articles about being hated, is terrible after the damage that is being inflicted.
I like this article – it’s sentiments are absolutely right – the Lib-Dems are not a party of the right wing and should celebrate the fact that they are not a party of the right wing. Unfortunately, the Lib-Dems are in danger of being dragged into electoral oblivion, because they are now perceived by those who voted for them at the last election (and elections before that) as having linked themselves to a right-wing coalition government. The party leadership has failed to understand that the principles that underline the politics of Cameron and Osborne are not the same as those of people such as Chris White and many others.
The following link leads to an article on what I’d like to see happen at the Party Conference! I realise that these insurrectionist thoughts will be readily dismissed, but in truth, they are simply an extension of the thrust of this article and the thoughts and beliefs that lie, very properly behind it.
http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2011/09/the-lib-dems-autumn-conference-four-days-to-save-the-party/
Dare I say it, but in one respect the Express and the LibDems are united! Pretty much every article outlining some problem in Britain blames it on “Labour’s disastrous legacy” – which is pretty much the line Nick Clegg takes.
Good article but the day the Express supports Liberalism is the day the world must have turned upside down!
‘Dare I say it, but in one respect the Express and the LibDems are united! Pretty much every article outlining some problem in Britain blames it on “Labour’s disastrous legacy” – which is pretty much the line Nick Clegg takes.’
Well John what about Labour’s legacy on human & civil rights and on increasing the divide between rich and poor – and now it has been revealed their cosy relationship with the the Colonel.
The following link leads to an article on what I’d like to see happen at the Party Conference! I realise that these insurrectionist thoughts will be readily dismissed, but in truth, they are simply an extension of the thrust of this article and the thoughts and beliefs that lie, very properly behind it.
http://www.allthatsleft.co.uk/2011/09/the-lib-dems-autumn-conference-four-days-to-save-the-party/
I agree this should be required reading. We do have to ask exactly what the Libs are getting from the coalition to benefit ordinary working people. The folk who are of course the natural constituent of a progressive left wing or if you prefer centre left party as the Liberals actually are in their political soul and tradition.