Never Mind The Ballots

In a New Statesman column not yet online, Peter Wilby writes:

When working people go on strike, they are usually denounced on all sides, by Labour as well as Tory politicians, left-wing newspapers as well as right-wing. Laws are proposed to make it more difficult for them to withdraw their labour. But when capitalists go on strike, it's a different matter.

British Gas threatens to shut down its offshore drilling in Morecambe Bay, in protest against the government's windfall tax on the profits, and it gets a sympathetic hearing from the Guardian. Note that neither British Gas nor nor the oil companies argue that the tax will wipe out the profits, only that the profits won't be high enough. Words and phrases such as greed, blackmail, holding the country to ransom, punishing innocent children and risking old folks' lives come to mind.

Perhaps our rulers, having made it as hard as possible for unions to organise strikes, could now apply similar principles to big companies and require shareholder ballots before they suspend operations.

An excellent idea.

Like a permanently higher rate of corporation tax on the banks and the utilities, with the money spent on reimbursing employers’ National Insurance contributions for workers aged 25 or under and 55 or over, and with strict regulation to ensure that no cost was passed on to workers, consumers, communities or the environment.

Like the mutualisation of the banks, and the return of the utilities to public ownership, while safeguarding the United Kingdom by opposing any relinquishment, either of central government’s preference share in any corporation that included the Bank of Scotland, or of central government’s controlling interest in the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Like making the supermarkets fund investment in agriculture and small business, determined in close consultation with the National Farmers’ Union and the Federation of Small Businesses, by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax, and in either case accompanied by strict regulation to ensure that the costs were not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment.

Like a ban on any company’s paying any employee more than ten times what it pays any other employee, with the whole public sector (including MPs and Ministers) functioning as one for this purpose, its median wage pegged permanently and by statute at the median wage in the private sector, and with an absolute statutory ban on paying anyone more than the Prime Minister.

Like the requirement that every public limited company to have one non-executive director appointed by the Secretary of State for a fixed term equivalent to that of other directors, and responsible for protecting the interests of workers, small shareholders, consumers, communities and the environment.

Like a unified system of personal tax allowances, benefits, pensions, student funding and minimum wage legislation, so that no one’s tax-free income fell below half national median earnings. Like giving every household a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State. And like the abolition non-domicile tax status.

That would be a start, anyway.