Results from the largest opinion poll since that slightly odd one in 2016 are in, and what a surprise: Brexit negotiations have not convinced people that the sunny uplands are just over the brow of this particular Everest.
Instead, there is a definite shift in public views: an eight-point majority for Remain in Survation’s 20,000-person poll (54-46). More interesting was the map showing the extent of the change; Leave-loving Wales is now Remain, while ‘Labour Leave’ constituencies in the north of England have also seen the light – or the lights going out.
As is so often the case, there were immediate redoubled calls for a People’s Vote from Remainer politicians.
I am technically in favour of a new vote. I marched for one in London two weeks ago. The last time I marched, it was against the Iraq war; a simple choice. However, this time, I marched not because I thought another referendum was the right policy, but because nothing better is on offer.
The problem is that our democracy is more broken than that campaign recognises. Also, a new plebiscite may only demonstrate that brokenness in greater detail.
I believe there is sufficient evidence of proven illegality and electoral offences to demand a halt to Brexit. There is also the ICO report which proves data crimes by Arron Banks’ companies and embarrasses the Lib Dems. Moreover, investigations are focusing on the dark money that enabled the UK’s largest ever political donation.
It is not enough in that context to demand a new referendum under the same conditions. So what should we do?
We should revoke Article 50 and allow the Banks investigations to be completed. We should demand a full inquiry into the 2016 referendum, with powers to make recommendations on systemic reform. We should commit to a full parliamentary response to those recommendations, including action on the most pressing. We should give real consideration to reports and recommendations from the DCMS Committee inquiry, led by Damian Collins, that has helped to reveal so much of this broken system. We should fund the kind of public interest journalism that has tenaciously and bravely exposed corruption and dark money.
Finally, we should commit to offering a new referendum when all of this is complete.
I prefer to offer a choice between an agreed government position, no deal, and the option to Remain. Further options could be added, of course, if AV were used. Why restrict the choice?
This set of measures is unlikely ever to happen. However, it is a comprehensive response to the current crisis. It is internally consistent and in line with our party’s values, avoiding the illogic of calling for another vote under the same inadequate conditions as the 2016 vote.
I am told we should demand better. It is time to outflank the People’s Vote campaign and inject some urgency. It is time to restore our democracy.
* Tom King is a Liberal Democrat member and activist. He has worked for Liberal Democrat MPs and served on three policy working groups. He is the author of The Generous Society.
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David Raw
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38 Comments
Yes, Brexit is important, although I don’t like the ‘rotten borough’ description. The Lib Dem one trick pony approach seems to have stopped them focussing on some of the more unseemly sides of inequality in the UK – which I believe helped fuel Brexit vote resentment in 2016.
Today we learn the boss of house builders Persimmon, Jeff Fairburn, is to leave after a row over his £75m pay award. He left by “mutual agreement at the request of the company”. He was originally offered £ 110 million but it was later reduced to £ 75 million. Last month Fairburn walked away from a BBC interview when asked about his pay. “I’d rather not talk about that,” he told a BBC reporter.
Persimmon, the UK’s second-largest house builder, pushed up profits in 2017 as demand for newly built homes continues to boom. They announced pre-tax profits up 25 per cent to £966m for the full year 2017, compared to the previous year. Last month, they said revenues for the full year were up 9 per cent to £3.42bn, after completions of new homes rose 6 per cent to 16,043.
Instead of diddling about with a theoretical land taxation, Lib Dems ought to demand massive income tax increases on such as Mr Fairburn’s £ 75 million, and on company profits via Corporation tax. In the Persimmon case they would get a hearing. It might just persuade the electorate to forget about the Lib Dem support for Osborne’s massive Corporation Tax cuts in 2014.
In July 2014 the Financial Times reported, “The UK government’s aggressive cuts to corporation tax are costing more than £5bn a year, requiring funding from elsewhere in the Budget at a time of spending cuts”. No wonder some folk kicked against all of this in 2016 and now Lib Dems fail to get a hearing in 2018.
On the other hand, lowered taxes may have got the management all revved up and building more houses than they otherwise would have, not to mention making a killing before Labour get in and make such activity hardly worth the effort.
Certainly agree that someone earning 75 million should be audited to make sure they are handing over the 30-odd million that the tax system should be getting out of them.
54% is nothing like enough. Not even close. The political class (in both major parties) is astute and this figure says “keep fudging along without apparently favouring one side or the other”.
It would need to be 65%+ to get one of them suddenly to say “I agree with Nick”.
All that “dark money” stuff clearly burns you up but for the great mass of the public it is just technicalities, irregularities and the stuff that politicians do. Not a single one would concede that they were duped into a mistaken vote and to suggest they were is an insult to their intelligence.
700,000 marched for a second referendum. That just leaves 65,200,000 who didn’t. I agree with David. The party has become consumed and obsessed by one issue with no voice on any other.
It looks more and more like some ‘deal’ (of course, worse than what we had) will get cobbled together and no chance of a second referendum at all (with only 54% after two years campaigning). What will the stance of the party be next March? Just a big sulk? Or some ideas to make the best of whatever it is? Which will the public prefer?
Bless and Nigel got 1200 to march with him. As to the party being consumed and obsessed well let us see what government has been doing.
Exclusive: Meetings of Theresa May’s National Security Council were repeatedly put on hold because the government became “consumed” by Brexit, the prime minister’s former national security adviser tells Business Insider.
Sir Mark Lyall Grant tells BI that May’s attempts to forge a new “global Britain” are stalling because of the all-consuming nature of Britain’s exit from the EU.
“Meetings were cancelled at the last minute because there had to be another meeting on Brexit,” he said.
https://www.televisor.co.uk/global/politics/theresa-mays-national-security-meetings-cancelled-because-of-brexit/110708
If the government can’t even make time for “National Security Council ” meetings it is a bit rich to cry the party is obsessed. Brexit consumes all. It has paralysed government since the vote. The fact that Brexiteers don’t understand what they voted for, which was for Brexit to consume all reflects badly on them not the people who warned them “Don’t open the box, no good will come out of it”. I know why you have to pretend Brexit isn’t much, because if you actually owned up to the decision and the consequences that flow from it you have made your whole self-worth flies out of the window.
I know Brexiteers like to avoid responsibility but it is worth looking at the comments in this article.
Barden Corporation to close Plymouth factory with loss of 400 jobs – because of Brexit
https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/business/barden-corporation-brexit-factory-closures-2187191
Such comments as
Here we go again with the sensationalism and subsequent bleating from the puny brains. This has f*** all to do with Brexit and all you doom mongers need to provide a concise argument against leaving the EU instead of dishing out ill-informed blither.
So a Brexiteer is told Brexit has had an effect but no this cannot be it is to do with all us “doom mongers”. I suspect many a Brexiteer will take a similar approach to a fact free response. The sad thing is 400 people have lost their jobs because Brexiteers know better and don’t need such luxuries as facts.
The cost will wrack up, The Brexiteers will deflect and lie because the truth they made a bad decision is not something they can ever accept.
Hello
Please tone down your language if you want this Comment to be published.
Tahir
David Raw,
you say you don’t like the ‘rotten borough’ description. Read these two short articles, connect the dots and weep:
http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/secrets-of-britain-s-new-homes-channel-4-dispatches
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-6084581/How-taxpayers-helped-builder-Persimmon-516m-profit.html
Let’s leave the demand for massive income tax increases on such as Mr Fairburn’s £ 75 million, and on company profits via Corporation tax to the Labour party. Company CEO’s are already being taxed at 47% on their salary and with VAT and other duties on spending will be paying over 50% of their income to the treasury on top of the employers’ national insurance of 13.8% the company pays on their salary.
The late James Mirrlees left us the answers as to how to design an equitable and efficient system of taxation that could increase the social welfare of all. It is high time we took notice of such people who spent a lifetime explaining why exorbitant rates of taxation on incomes and profits were counter=productive and socially damaging.
@ Joe Bourke “Let’s leave the demand for massive income tax increases on such as Mr Fairburn’s £ 75 million, and on company profits via Corporation tax to the Labour party.” Certainly not, Joe.
Unlike what I take to be your position, after nearly sixty years in the Liberal/Lib Dem Party, and having held office in local government, it’s clear to me I’m more affected by the people I see in my local Food Bank who have been hammered by the decision to introduce Universal Credit back in 2013 than by any fanciful Laffer Curve theory.
If Liberal Democrats have no remedy other than the Laffer Curve and a long distance land tax, then it’s increasingly likely they will go – and deserve to go – into the dustbin of history.
Joe,
The optimal tax rate is that, that gives us a functioning society. If our government chooses to force the poor into destitution to save a few pennies on the tax rate of the rich, well they will reap a bitter harvest and so will we all. You get what you pay for Joe, don’t pay for the services that make a society function and it won’t. It appears to me that economists know the theory of money but don’t have a clue about the feels of humanity.
David Raw,
the Liberal Democrats prides itself on evidenced based policy. The most authoritative source of evidence we have for how the UK tax system may best be reformed is the Mirrlees review. Like all economists that have spent their careers studying these matters they have come to an empirically based understanding of what is effective in delivering social justice and what is not. Mirrlees himself began his studies assuming that higher rates of income tax would be the key to alleviating poverty ,but when the evidence showed otherwise, he put his initial bias aside. Progressive income tax has its place but only up to a point where it becomes self-defeating.
The whole raison d’etre of land value tax is to tackle poverty and inequality at its source. It is tackling the underlying causes of inequality not putting yet another sticking plaster on a gaping wound, Punitive taxes on higher earners may salve the consciences of some folk but it is the politics of class division not Liberalism.
Taxation based on economic rents does mean higher taxes on the wealthiest in society and higher taxes on companies making super-profits. It is simply a matter of being smarter about how that is achieved, neither damaging economic growth or investment in the process and not trying to go back to the failed policies of the 1970s when income tax rates reached 98% on investment income. It is those policies that belong in the dustbin of history.
Leave the misplaced Idealism to the champagne socialists riding the coat tails of the politics of envy. I want to see a party that understands what it is doing and can deliver real change across society.
“Instead of diddling about with a theoretical land taxation, Lib Dems ought to demand massive income tax increases on such as Mr Fairburn’s £ 75 million” – he can only make that because we don’t tax land. It is, to all intents and purposes, *all* rent (in his case, of land) just as most high incomes are nearly all rent of some kind – if not land, then financial privileges, intellectual property privileges and so on.
There is nothing “diddling” about land taxation. It is the single most important change we could make to finally consign the legacy of feudalism to the dustbin in this country and start returning the full product of labour to labour and a just interest on capital to investors (as opposed to financiers). That one policy would solve at a stroke (preferably with a dividend of some kind to everyone) many of the problems that we are told made some people vote leave: housing costs and supply, a feeling that some areas so not receive a just proportion of the rewards of national economic success, even the distrust of immigrants and their supposed effects on jobs and services, the imbalance in the economy toward both the FRE sectors and the South East of England, and the endless meddling by politicians in the name of the “greater good” but perennially screwing things up even by their own measures.
And even Tory advisors, well Paul Collier at least, are now saying it is urgent!
Interesting responses from Joe and Jock. Let’s be clear, a Land Tax could be a long term answer to some issues – I don’t deny that :
But it doesn’t provide an immediate to answer to the issues I raised. It requires years of detailed work to draft water tight legislation which would be harried and opposed by vested interests in the Tory Party (LL.G. couldn’t even properly convince his own party both before and after WW1).
It also requires either a majority Lib Dem Government – which won’t happen next week (or ever ?) and support from other parties. It will not address the immediate issue of collapsing Social Care, or Universal Credit. It is the political equivalent of the philosophers stone.
@ Joe You quote the Mirrlees Review as an evidence based document – all 1274 pages of it. Yes, it has a lot going for it, but the Director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, conceded my point that “the reforms must be considered as a whole and as an aspiration to be achieved in a decade or two”. I don’t know about you, but I’ll probably be dead then as will many of the people who need immediate help now.
Jaimie Kaffash of Accountancy Age also quotes Johnson as saying “the political realities were such that the reforms could not be brought in piecemeal, but as an evolution” and that “the product of a think-tank has no need to engage with the real world that politicians must engage with”.
I respect your evangelical zeal for defending Land Taxation (just as Moses would defend his tablets of stone), Joe, but in the real world certain things need action now.
As for ‘champagne socialists and the politics of envy’, that’s just a throwaway phrase to
alienate possible allies (and even me who has an occasional prosecco). But it’s hardly an evidence based statement.
David Raw
As ever you speak for your passion for the poor. But a ever you are complacent and unkind to this party. Sir Vince opposed the tax threshold advantage in the budget which the well off but not super rich would get, and did so because it was unfair to the poor. Labour did not oppose it and yet favour a small increase on richer people , with two new tax bands. Both are thus able to say they favour the richer not poorer bearing the responsibility. Why talk of deserving the dustbin of history? You were never in the Labour party, unlike me, yet if I criticise that party, which I do more than you, it is because I was in it, not because I hate it. I prefer to have either a European pr multi party system, or the US , type, two broad groups, in which we would be with the Labour party in the main under a Social Democrat or Liberal banner, you would never have been able to have ideological purity, the left would never dominate, I would be in parliament because the party I was in would have been one I was sure I believed in, and this debate would be , not about a rotten borough based on lack of democracy or tax policy, but big money in the elections, and the ludicrous electoral college. Had the Labour party elected Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper, we , in my view, would now have a workable alliance, one I favoured when in the Labour party and we had a coalition in Scotland. You mean well, but demoralise me, I feel like starting a new movement, to replace both this and the Labour parties with a broad , not far left but centre left party , social and Liberal democrats, then we can agree on free and fair economic policies.
“LL.G. couldn’t even properly convince his own party both before and after WW1” – I’m told that 400 MPs petitioned Campbell Bannerman after the 1906 election. Maybe not all of the Liberals but it must have been a good 3/4 of them assuming every Labour and Irish MP made up the rest.
If you try and define the Fairburns of this world they will just find ways of avoiding it, and, failing that, the unjust accumulation, in their case, of land rents through the planning-development process will still be there, just given the shareholders as a whole rather than to one extra shareholder by dint of his remunerative shareholding.
I find his bonus repugnant, not because of how much it is, but because of where I know it came from – directly out of the pockets of housebuyers and anyone else who relies on land to provide shelter rather than profit. And taxing Fairburn will not stop that, which is the real injustice.
To return to LLG – in his supportive speeches Churchill made the point that with the land taxes for the first time the taxman would be asking not just how much have you got, but how did you get it. And that’s the point of taxing land rather than income, or even (non-financial) capital – that only by attacking where accumulation is as a result of processes that harm others will we stop the harm. And as the intervening century has proven, sub-optimal measures to try and redress problems already arisen will produce sub-optimal outcomes. There is no point in dickering around like everyone else proposing piecemeal change around the edges of an unjust system.
@ Jock Coats And after Churchill ‘re-ratted’ and became Chancellor of the Exchequer did he introduce Land taxation, Jock ?
Can you tell me what happened to the original LL.G. land taxes introduced before the War ?…………………….. and, what happened inside the Liberal Party after the war when he re-joined and tried to use his accumulated sale of honours fund to introduce Land nationalisation as party policy ?
@ Lorenzo Cherin “But a(s) ever you are complacent and unkind to this party. ”
Is this the same Lorenzo Cherin who fifteen minutes later says, “We are unable to breakthrough because we have nobody to excite us, not one mp can enough.We have got few points up in this obsession with Brexit.”
Come off it, Mr. C.
David Raw,
I fully agree that in the real world certain things need action now. The 2014 Care Act puts a statutory obligation on local authorioties to meet assessed needs. Assessed needs that require public funding fall into two groups: those that are a duty to meet and those that are a power to meet. Those that are a duty must indeed be met whatever the cost. The legal obligation to meet the need regardless of cost does not, however, apply to needs that are a power to meet.
The legal duty to meet need should be recognised as a minimum safety net, with the political process determining how much need above the safety net is met via public funds versus direct charges.
Dilnot is unambiguous in his recommendations https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/06/andrew-dilnot-social-care-reviewer-condemns-uk-system-and-calls-for-new-tax saying social insurance with an excess for social care was now urgently required for “staggeringly striking, massive welfare-inefficiency reasons”.
“I think it would be entirely reasonable to look again at the triple lock and say, ‘Let’s substitute some of the more expensive elements of the triple lock. Let’s turn them into a new triple lock with social care as part of the triple lock’,”
Dilnot’s proposal is that the money saved by shedding the most costly of the triple lock’s conditions could be used to pay for the cap.
This means, he said, that providing non-means-tested social care to every British citizen would not require more money from state coffers. “There are many ways in which the scale of money we’re talking about could be reallocated in the upcoming budget without looking for extra money.”
The green paper is due by the end of the year. The party will need to be able to engage with the consultation intelligently and constructively if we are to have an influence on the outcome.
David Raw
Good point, the negativity getting to me!!!
Though I would love there to be a referendum on our options, for us to remain relevant we must show the electorate that we are prepared to move on if TM pushes through her Brexit negotiations to an unglamourous finale. There are a huge number of other issues that we can and must campaign on both nationally and locally. The country is crying out for that compassionate voice, tempered by economic and logistical reality that is our trademark.
I must admit Lorenzo, I never think of David Raw as complacent. I do however see so many who think what is needed is their big idea, without addressing the simple test “How can the Lib Dems get it enacted in any reasonable timeframe?”
I think it was Jesus who said “The poor are always with us” – and more of them will be with us longer if we continuously look for our personal perfect solution rather than some action that moves things in the right direction now.
David Evans,
How can the Lib Dems get it enacted in any reasonable timeframe?” Surely, the only answer to this is cross-party consensus as Norman Lamb has been striving for for some time.
The Dilnot proposals from 2011 were accepted by the coalition but implementatio was postponed. The Tories 2015 manifesto pledged to introduce a lifetime cap on care costs in 2016 but council leaders asked for allocated funding to be used instead to ease the funding crisis in day to day social care costs. Under the Care Act the cap on liability for care costs, was to be set at £72,000 for people above state pension age. In addition to this, the level of personal assets at which people would be eligible for state help with residential care costs, irrespective of the cap, was due to rise from the current £23,250 to £118,000. An estimated 35,000 people would have benefited immediately.
The problems have gotten worse in the last few years not better, and the funding requirement will keep on increasing as the numbers of elderly with care needs increase.
The LGA has set out their own green paper https://www.local.gov.uk/about/news/lga-launches-own-green-paper-adult-social-care-reaches-breaking-point putting out to consultation the following options for funding an expected gap of £3.5 billion by 2024/25:
– Increasing income tax for taxpayers of all ages – a 1p rise on the basic rate could raise £4.4 billion in 2024/25
– Increasing national insurance – a 1p rise could raise £10.4 billion in 2024/25
– A Social Care Premium – charging the over-40s and working pensioners an earmarked contribution (such as an addition to National Insurance or another mechanism). If it was assumed everyone over 40 was able to pay the same amount (not the case under National Insurance), raising £1 billion would mean a cost of £33.40 for each person aged 40+ in 2024/25.
– Means testing universal benefits, such as winter fuel allowance and free TV licences, could raise £1.9 billion in 2024/25
– Allowing councils to increase council tax – a 1 per cent rise would generate £285 million in 2024/25
Ah – only a Lib Dem discussion board could move swiftly from a post about Brexit and the failures of the referendum to Land Value Taxation….
Returning to Tom’s point, in an ideal world, it would definitely be better to revoke Art 50, have a thorough public enquiry, clean up the rules and then a referendum on the deal. I wouldn’t agree to any hypothetical alternatives – that was one of the problems with the 2016 referendum. However, I feel that people can’t wait that long and so we will need to resolve quickly with a People’s Vote and then have enquiries afterwards. It is not ideal but I feel confident that the next vote would be fairer given the subsequent scrutiny.
Mark, not so surprising when even Polly Toynbee peppers her article on social care funding with references and analogies to Brexit https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/22/care-funding-crisis-theresa-may-scared saying “most funding solutions that look blindingly obvious to experts would be politically unacceptable to most voters. This is political deadlock, a Brexit-style popular resistance to the expert view that suggests untaxed property wealth should contribute more.”
Michael Meadowcroft. former Liberal MP for Leeds West writes in response to the article:
“Polly Toynbee points to the dilemma facing politicians over paying for social care (The social care crisis drags on, thanks to May’s cowardice, 22 May). The legitimate human desire to pass on one’s hard-earned wealth – in the vast majority of cases one’s house – to the next generation clashes with the legitimate need for the state to draw on that wealth to pay for social care.
The case often put by my Leeds constituents was “We’ve paid for our house so why should we not be entitled to pass it on to our son or daughter.” The huge flaw in this argument is that the current value of the house to be passed on is way above what the person paid for it decades before, even including the addition of general inflation.
My Leeds house today is valued at twice what I paid for it, plus inflation, 37 years ago. Why not, therefore, accept the argument but limit the capital sum thus safeguarded to the current value of what the individual actually paid, with the additional sum then available to pay for social care? It would not be too difficult to produce an actual or assessed valuation, where necessary with an assumed date, and then the amount available to the state would be known. This would square the circle of the emotional inheritance argument and the need to pay for social care.”
@ Lorenzo and David Evans “As ever you speak for your passion for the poor”.
Oh no, I don ‘t. I have a passion for justice for the people – not a convenient category called ‘the poor’…….. something this party seems to have lost in its pursuit of all its present preoccupations – and in some cases, tediously repetitive theories.
I agree with Mark Goodrich – we Lib Dems, being educated people with lots of ideas, love to go off at tangents. Not that I mind. I have found this discussion, typical of LDV, very informative and interesting. However, we should also get back to the point. If we have a nasty Brexit crash, all values will probably fall: the pound, land, property, profits, wages, savings, investments, goods and services, imports and exports. This will reduce government revenue and make it all the harder to balance the budget (still a worthwhile objective) and pay for improvements in health, welfare, education, the emergency services, infrastructure, defence and all the rest. So why don’t we use the Survation poll (which shows that ‘remain’ is now eight points ahead of ‘leave’) to question the smug Brexiteer assumption that it is ‘the will of the people’ to charge ahead with Brexit regardless of the consequences? Why not challenge the government to ask the EU for a substantial extension of the negotiating period so that we can have a proper national debate on the key issues – and the snags we have already encountered – leading up to a new, simple, advisory referendum? ‘The people’ will feel that they are being informed and consulted, parliament and the government will have more information on which to base their decisions, democracy will be strengthened. What is there not to like?
I’m afraid to say David the nasty crash has started already. One large Brexit bonus has juts happened.
The City of London was just dealt its biggest Brexit-related blow following an announcement by American financial markets operator CME Group that it is shifting its European market for short-term financing, the largest in the EU, out of London to Amsterdam. Worried about the dense fog of regulatory uncertainty hanging over London’s future, the firm wants to ensure that its continental clients can continue using its services even in the event of a no-deal Brexit in March.
The decision was apparently taken before CME’s acquisition of BrokerTec — as the company is known — from NEX Group PLC was given the green light by UK market regulators last week. It is the first case of a major financial market leaving the UK over Brexit fears. Although all large London-based trading venues have set up a regulated entity in the EU in preparation for Brexit, BrokerTec is the first to move an existing market lock, stock, and barrel to a continental European city.
“All of our euro-denominated bonds and repo will move to Amsterdam,” John Edwards, managing director of BrokerTec Europe, said in an interview. “We saw no benefit in splitting liquidity pools. Our U.K. business will not be able to provide services to the European clients.”
On average, €210 billion of European short-term financing instruments were traded per day on BrokerTec in October, Edwards said. But that market will now be moved to CME’s Dutch subsidiary, NEX Amsterdam BV, so that BrokerTec can eradicate the risk of its EU-based clients being cut off from Europe’s repo market if Britain severs its ties with Brussels in four and a half months’ time.
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/11/08/as-regulatory-fog-thickens-pre-brexit-angst-takes-toll/
There are a few faint rays of sunshine in th report for our brave Brexiteers, but even they will struggle to paint losing a “, €210 billion of European short-term financing instruments were traded per day on BrokerTec ” market as a plus.
Davids Evans Raw
Complacency as in we must not get too negatively inclined towards our own party, it does have a lousy way of making some, me, yes, down.
The phrase , the people, is as much of a stereotype in a usage not meant, as is , the poor, we all understand what is meant, shame that some cannot see admiration when it is in there colleague saying something.
Too right on theoretical rather than practical, solutions, but I, as an ex Labour, man, years ago, despair at not getting involved in a way in which a party can win, to do the very needed things for our country and its disunity.
@Innocent Bystander
“Not a single one would concede that they were duped into a mistaken vote and to suggest they were is an insult to their intelligence”
There are plenty. Some in particular believed that money saved through Brexit would be spent on the NHS. Now they’re angry and they want another vote. Then there are people who were confused by claims and counter claims, so did not vote. They’ve made their minds up now, and want a vote. I met some of each, and this is what they tell us. I’ve heard of many more.
Here are two who voted leave, with their personal reasons why they would now vote remain.
(“They cocked it up” and Lithuanian carers)
https://www.facebook.com/CornwallForEurope/videos/268110223905567/?t=0
https://www.facebook.com/CornwallForEurope/videos/1939794489446625/?t=1
I have engaged with Tom’s ‘rotten borough’ description in the comments above linking to an article referencing Persimmon Homes windfall from the help to buy policy.
It is a misreprensation to say that land value capture policies are theoretical. We already have them in the UK in the form of Section 106 agreements and community infrastructure levies and have had them in some form since the 1947 Town and County planning Act. The problem is neither S106 or CIL delivers sufficient affordable housing or the necessary public infrastructure to support private housing developments. This is the primary focus of the work of the cross-party All Party Parliamentary Group that Vince Cable chairs.
As well as infrastructure improvements and planning consents, wider societal changes such as improvements in the local, or national, economy also generate increases in land values, These are captured in part on commercial property by business rates and to a lesser degree by council tax/stamp duty land tax/capital gains and inheritance tax on residential and investment property . Again, nothing theoretical – it is happening now as is the sale of large number of homes to meet residential nursing and care home costs. Rationalisation of this system of property tax is the focus of current Land Value Tax research and proposals to increase the progressiveness of the system, not any theoretical aspects of wider tax reform based around LVT.
There is serious work undertaken on Land Value Capture issues and property tax reform by respected bodies like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Shelter and the Resolution Foundation as well as the Housing, Communities and Local Government select committee among others.
There is of course recognition of the political hurdles associated with property tax reforms, but then as John Stuart Mill advised long ago,economic researchers need to focus on presenting an objective analysis of the issues under consideration; the political aspects are for politicians to address.
When the Brexit Secretary doesn’t seem to know the importance of Dover and doesn’t even seem to know we live on a island “not so innocent bystander” I don’t think anyone needs to insult Brexiteers intelligence the lack of it is self evident.
Tom King The boroughs may not be rotten but the way they are financed most certainly is .Jeff Fairburn can demand such a gross salary because the planning system and contributions from developers has become so stacked against local authorities getting affordable or social housing funding can easily be avoided since the introduction of the new NPPF and treasury interference led by the former chancellor George Osborne made the large developers almost untouchable by local government representatives .We now live in a country where large corporate largess gets you the policy you want from the law makers to the detriment of social cohesion.
@ David Raw,
“If Liberal Democrats have no remedy other than the Laffer Curve……”
You’ve mentioned Laffer a few time recently. Not all arguments, and certainly not the good ones, against raising taxes are inspired by Arthur Laffer.
His argument is sort of Ok as far as it goes. If, for example, we want to maximise tax revenue from cigarette sales then we’d set the rate of tax neither too low (which won’t collect much revenue) nor too high (which might cause smokers to give up). That’s straightfoward enough, but what he doesn’t consider is the effect of maximising the tax take from one particular tax on all other taxes.
So, regardless of any health effect considerations, if we maximise the revenue from cigarette taxation we will find that the revenue from something else will fall. Maybe alcohol revenue. Maybe VAT receipts generally as people have less money to spend.
So we have to look at the bigger picture. This may not even be about maximising revenue overall anyway. If Govt tries to take too much money out of the economy, relative to what it spends in, then economic activity will probably fall to a suboptimal level. This is not what we want. Conversely, if Govt takes out too little in tax, relative to what it spends in, we could have an inflation problem if the available resources aren’t present in the economy to meet the available demand.
Neil Sandison,
nail on the head.
Happy to agree with Joe Bourke…………. Meanwhile urgent immediate action is needed to sort out the Social Care Crisis and the Universal Credit crisis…….. assuming we think clearly demonstrated human need is of immediate concern.
@ Peter Martin. And how do you measure a piece of elastic ?
David Raw,
“urgent immediate action is needed to sort out the Social Care Crisis and the Universal Credit crisis…….. assuming we think clearly demonstrated human need is of immediate concern.” I would second that.
@ David Raw,
I’m a Physicist. I can measure anything you like. 🙂
It looks like we all agree on the “Social Care Crisis and the Universal Credit crisis” etc. But how to get you away from “put a penny on income tax ” thinking?
Or in Joe’s case, thinking that single LVT is a magic cure all.
A penny on income tax is a gimmick and no more than a meretricious slogan – as I’ve said many times, Peter.
Peter Martin,
Personally, I favour a more broadly based system of taxation over a single tax (much as was advocated in the Mirrlees review) that would replace business rates with LVT, reform council tax and tax company profits on the basis of economic rents.
Social care was the recipient of additional funds for 2018/19 and 2019/20 in this Budget. The government had already announced £240m of additional funding for local authorities to spend on care and support, with the aim of freeing up NHS beds this winter. The Chancellor announced that a further £240m in winter-pressures money will be available to councils in 2019/20.
Alongside this, £410m in additional social care funds will be available for local councils for 2019/20. While welcome, this falls far short of rising pressures of 3.7% per year and offers little scope to address unmet need or improve quality. In addition, local authorities will face continuing pressure to increase the rates they pay for social care because providers’ staff costs are increasing faster than inflation, due to the rise in the national living wage, from £7.93 currently, to £8.21 from April 2019.
In my opinion, local authorities need to be freed to collect the taxes the need for the provision of statutory services directly through a combination of 100% business rates retention, council tax increases and direct charges for services like waste collection.
Domiciliary adult social care provided in private homes and residential nursing homes should be rolled into an integrated healthcare budget and provided by the NHS. Residential care homes should be primarily council-owned homes supplemented by private sector providers at a reasonable fixed rate. The social care services provided by the NHS would be funded via national taxes and the council provided services would be funded by local taxes such that adult social care was provided free at the point of use. All landowners would be subject to Council tax or LVT assessments on their property without discount. Relief for low-income homeowners would be given by deferral of tax assessments until their principal private residence was sold or bequeathed, as happens with property tax assessments in most jurisdictions around the world. That should resolve the issue of who pays (we all do – elderly and their working children) and allow for services to be provided on the basis of need not how much is in the budget.