That’s your bloody GDP. It is not ours’. Thus a Brexit supporter expressed their detachment from the national economy in 2016.

This proposal addresses both the perception and reality behind this comment. It provides poorer households with a bigger share of GDP, achieving a more deliverable redistribution of income than a Universal Basic Income. It makes more people feel that this is ‘our GDP’. It also steers the national conversation about growth towards ‘net zero’.

UBI and its problems

A conference motion calls for the party to campaign for UBI.

But the practicalities mean we are doomed to deliver a very small and disappointing version of a very big and (somewhat) controversial idea. The UBI promise of a reasonable income for everyone is not achievable. Recent work by sympathetic academics has shown how far we can (and can’t) get. Even if we raise higher rate taxes a lot and get rid of personal allowances (so that for most people there is no net benefit) to fund a UBI, we cannot sustainably pay a UBI of much more than £3000. At this level, many poor people would lose out unless all or most current means-tested benefits stay in place – thus forgoing one of the significant supposed advantages of UBI. And even to get to £3000, we would likely have deployed the money from all of our tax-raising ideas on this one concept cutting out anything else we might want to do.

Of course, we could make something work at a very low level – but in advocating UBI as a concept, we will have used all our capital creating a vision which we cannot sensibly deliver. If we want an original idea on redistribution, we are better starting with something which could be done within the country’s means.

An alternative proposal for redistribution

We start with GDP.

We take out the ‘value add’ from the big CO2 generating industries such as oil & airlines– let us call this Net-Zero-Compatible-GDP.

Some fixed percentage of this becomes the ‘citizens’ share’ of Net-Zero-Compatible-GDP. The state shares this between all adult citizens through a monthly payment the following year. If the Citizens’ share is 2.5%, this would be roughly £1000 each year.

To make this neutral for the public finances, we also reduce the income tax personal allowance by £4000 and increase the rate of national insurance on incomes over £50,000 from the current 2% to 6%. Taken together, these measures transfer income from the top 10% of individuals by income to the bottom 20%, with no net effect on those in between. With some care in implementation, there should be no losers outside the top 10%.

Its benefits

The ‘GDP share’ delivers three benefits.

First, it is a proposal for redistribution which is not hampered by the grander pretensions of a UBI.

Second, it promises a more positive national conversation linking individual income to the national economy. The extra (say) £30 I get from the economy’s 3% growth is easy to understand individually relevant headline from every chancellor’s budget speech.

Thirdly, it links this conversation about growth to net-zero and reinforces net-zero thinking within the government. People measure politicians on what they see tangibly in their pockets. Politicians manage what people measure.

We should consider a GDP share as an alternative option when we debate UBI at the party conference.

* Kevin has been a party member since June 2017, from Kingston