During the 2018 Labour Conference delegates passed a policy motion in which the workers of any given company would be entitled to own 10% of its stock. This, on the face of it, is not something that liberals would be entirely against. Indeed, it was David Lloyd George who, in 1908, settled a rail strike by creating boards which were formed between worker groups and the bosses on an equal parity – 50% worker, 50% bosses. The whole idea of worker cooperatives is also something which we in the Liberal Democrats are in full support, with Nick Clegg saying that he wished to create a “John Lewis economy” as late as 2012. If we look a little deeper, but not by much, we see what Labour’s plan truly is.
There is an insidious proviso in that policy. The stock dividend is capped at £500 per annum. This means that if a stock pays over this dividend, say £600, the state is then entitled to take £100 straight from the pocket of the worker. That money will then be used, presumably, for whatever this new government wishes, be that rail nationalisation or lost to the financial black hole that is the current NHS. Additionally, these stocks cannot be bought and sold. This, of course, means that the worker cannot expand their portfolio to include a wide range of investments in other newly formed cooperatives and, instead, simply leads to the creation of closed shops on a scale heretofore unseen. In short – this plan is nothing short of state mandated theft.
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