The long-silenced voice of mainstream moderation, the focal point of the biggest mass movement in English politics in living memory, the man who is playing to packed houses in places that Blair never noticed nor which ever noticed Blair, the man who will double his party's membership by Christmas, Jeremy Corbyn writes:
The movement for the Robin Hood Tax has been an incredibly successful insurgent campaign, now supported by nearly a million people, to put a small tax on the purchase of financial assets – stocks, shares and derivatives – a financial transactions tax (FTT).
It is based on two very simple concepts.
The first, as the name suggests, is based on the idea that the rich should contribute a little more to stop the suffering of the poorest; and secondly the economic reality that it was the reckless behaviour of the finance sector that got us into this mess and they should be paying for it.
If we cast our minds back almost eight years, to September 2007, customers were not queuing out of the doors of Northern Rock branches because a Labour government had spent too much on nurses and teachers.
Just two weeks before, George Osborne had backed Labour’s spending plans.
Labour does have some responsibility for the crash. Not because we spent too much, but because we didn’t regulate enough.
Much of Europe has not covered itself in glory either in responding to the crash.
But now eleven European countries have got together and have a proposal on the table to put a FTT into operation.
What was the UK’s response – to engage with our European partners and join this initiative?
No, George Osborne tried and failed to take them to court for threatening the UK finance sector, wasting public money in the process.
In the US, a previously unfancied socialist called Bernie Sanders is running for the Democrat presidential nomination.
His policies strike a chord with millions of ordinary Americans. He has put forward an Inclusive Prosperity Bill that proposes a Financial Transaction Tax on stocks, bonds and derivatives.
In 2011, my colleague John McDonnell MP moved an amendment to the Finance Bill simply asking the UK government to report on the feasibility of introducing an FTT. We were just two of 25 MPs who supported it.
How much could be raised from a FTT is dependent upon many factors, although the IPPR thinktank estimated in 2013 that it could raise as much as £20 billion in the UK alone.
That revenue would be enough not to need a single cut to welfare in this Parliament, and to reverse those from the last.
It could help close the deficit and pay off our debts, or fund a sovereign wealth fund to invest in infrastructure for a more balanced economy.
Such a fund could create well-paid skilled jobs in the industries needed to tackle climate change – construction, energy and engineering.
Millions of our young people deserve a prosperous future, safe from the threat of climate change.
These highly-skilled, well-paid jobs would also go a long way to improving Britain's lagging productivity.
But the FTT is not just about raising revenue. It is, as Ann Pettifor says, about putting “sand in the wheels” of the speculative and destabilising activity that led to the crash.
Getting the balance right to maximise revenue and to have a deterrent effect will need careful consideration.
We are still paying for the last crisis, and yet there are fears in the bond markets and in the housing market that things are becoming unstable again.
As these warnings become louder, Chancellor George Osborne has made a concerted effort to resist any regulation on the finance sector, and in his recent budget announced that the bank levy will be wound down – even as he announces further welfare cuts for the poorest.
His policies of pay restraint, house price inflation and a reliance on rising consumer debt look to be setting the scene for another slowdown, if not worse.
As the party funded by hedge funds, it is no surprise that this most ideological of chancellors has appointed a hedge fund partner to the vacancy on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee.
The monetary levers that bailed us out last time will not be available again.
Interest rates are already at zero, the Bank of England has already poured £375 billion into its quantitative easing, and we are running a larger deficit with more debt than in 2007.
The route to recovery for all cannot rely on the systemically reckless speculation of the City of London.
Given Sherwood constituency Labour party recently gave me their backing, perhaps this Robin Hood movement has momentum.
The movement for the Robin Hood Tax has been an incredibly successful insurgent campaign, now supported by nearly a million people, to put a small tax on the purchase of financial assets – stocks, shares and derivatives – a financial transactions tax (FTT).
It is based on two very simple concepts.
The first, as the name suggests, is based on the idea that the rich should contribute a little more to stop the suffering of the poorest; and secondly the economic reality that it was the reckless behaviour of the finance sector that got us into this mess and they should be paying for it.
If we cast our minds back almost eight years, to September 2007, customers were not queuing out of the doors of Northern Rock branches because a Labour government had spent too much on nurses and teachers.
Just two weeks before, George Osborne had backed Labour’s spending plans.
Labour does have some responsibility for the crash. Not because we spent too much, but because we didn’t regulate enough.
Much of Europe has not covered itself in glory either in responding to the crash.
But now eleven European countries have got together and have a proposal on the table to put a FTT into operation.
What was the UK’s response – to engage with our European partners and join this initiative?
No, George Osborne tried and failed to take them to court for threatening the UK finance sector, wasting public money in the process.
In the US, a previously unfancied socialist called Bernie Sanders is running for the Democrat presidential nomination.
His policies strike a chord with millions of ordinary Americans. He has put forward an Inclusive Prosperity Bill that proposes a Financial Transaction Tax on stocks, bonds and derivatives.
In 2011, my colleague John McDonnell MP moved an amendment to the Finance Bill simply asking the UK government to report on the feasibility of introducing an FTT. We were just two of 25 MPs who supported it.
How much could be raised from a FTT is dependent upon many factors, although the IPPR thinktank estimated in 2013 that it could raise as much as £20 billion in the UK alone.
That revenue would be enough not to need a single cut to welfare in this Parliament, and to reverse those from the last.
It could help close the deficit and pay off our debts, or fund a sovereign wealth fund to invest in infrastructure for a more balanced economy.
Such a fund could create well-paid skilled jobs in the industries needed to tackle climate change – construction, energy and engineering.
Millions of our young people deserve a prosperous future, safe from the threat of climate change.
These highly-skilled, well-paid jobs would also go a long way to improving Britain's lagging productivity.
But the FTT is not just about raising revenue. It is, as Ann Pettifor says, about putting “sand in the wheels” of the speculative and destabilising activity that led to the crash.
Getting the balance right to maximise revenue and to have a deterrent effect will need careful consideration.
We are still paying for the last crisis, and yet there are fears in the bond markets and in the housing market that things are becoming unstable again.
As these warnings become louder, Chancellor George Osborne has made a concerted effort to resist any regulation on the finance sector, and in his recent budget announced that the bank levy will be wound down – even as he announces further welfare cuts for the poorest.
His policies of pay restraint, house price inflation and a reliance on rising consumer debt look to be setting the scene for another slowdown, if not worse.
As the party funded by hedge funds, it is no surprise that this most ideological of chancellors has appointed a hedge fund partner to the vacancy on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee.
The monetary levers that bailed us out last time will not be available again.
Interest rates are already at zero, the Bank of England has already poured £375 billion into its quantitative easing, and we are running a larger deficit with more debt than in 2007.
The route to recovery for all cannot rely on the systemically reckless speculation of the City of London.
Given Sherwood constituency Labour party recently gave me their backing, perhaps this Robin Hood movement has momentum.
The EU's "Robin Hood tax" would be a Franco-German raid on London, the Wall Street of Europe (80% of all European financial transactions go through the City).
ReplyDeleteWithout a similar tax on Tokyo, Singapore and Wall Street it would drive all the major investment banks overseas, taking London's entire economy with them.
Who wants to tell 3 million people they're about to lose their jobs and livelihoods?
Thank God Corbyn is a loon who will destroy the irrelevant rabble his party now is.
Hed have opened our doors to the whole of Calais and told us Cameron was "inhumane" to keep them out.
Well, there's a popular cause for you. The City. I don't know what you will do when there is an Opposition that stands up to it.
DeleteActually, I do. You'll implement a version of the Labour policy yourselves.
Osborne, the next Prime Minister because Cameron is going in this Parliament, is already largely defined by the supposedly lunatic 2015 Labour manifesto.
Even Kendall, and Blairites are a much harder nut for the Left to crack than Tories are, has now promised to reverse Osborne's inheritance tax cuts and divert the billion pounds to early years education.
Corbyn is setting the agenda, and he hasn't even won yet.
Once he has, then expect Osborne to tax the City as has not been seen since the 1970s, and to regulate it as has never been seen before.
As much as anything else, that will be a useful populist position for him against Boris Johnson.
Oh, and the City is not the cause that is easy or necessary to defend-but London's economy is.
ReplyDeleteThere's alot of people who don't work in the City whose jobs depend on it, nonetheless.
I wouldn't expect you to understand that, but people living there certainly do.
We shall see about that very soon indeed. Both in Parliament and in the London Mayoral Election.
DeleteThe only people celebrating any assault on the City would be the French and Germans who have long been intensely annoyed that Europe's financial capital is outside the eurozone.
ReplyDeleteIt's hilarious that they tried to cover up what they were doing by proposing a ""Europe-wide" tax, when almost the entirety of the tax would be paid by Britain (which has by far the biggest financial services sector in the EU).
The only way to make this work would be to levy the same tax on Wall Street, Tokyo and Singapore.
It's either a worldwide tax-which would make it a level playing field-or it's a direct assault on London.
That is certainly an argument. There are others. Let battle commence. Not least in and for London.
DeleteLondon, where Corbyn has been an MP for 32 years, this year increasing his majority and his vote share from a rock solid 12,401 and 54.5 per cent, to a whopping 21,194 and 60.2 per cent (on a six-way split).
Corbyn is setting no agenda-the Tories are just laughing watching him tear what's left of Labour apart (when they're not registering to vote for him, that is).
ReplyDeleteYou're clearly not in on the joke.
No, you aren't. It is the reliably buffoonish Toby Young and the almost defunct Telegraph, now mostly a picture-based paper about animals and the Royal Family, that have been proved complete pillocks by all of this.
DeleteUnless there are tens of thousands of Toby Young fanboys, capable of filling halls in Liverpool and Coventry, among numerous other places? Somehow, I doubt that very, very much.
The Tories have already come up with a watered down Living Wage, thus conceding the principle while demonstrating their own ineptitude to implement it.
Next up, the same on the Robin Hood Tax, on rent controls (now, there is a policy to carry London, as of course Labour did), and even some variation on state control of the railways and the utilities.
Again, a version of that last is already being attempted, by the very people who howled with derision at it a few months ago.
As Hitchens says, though, the Tories shouldn't be laughing too much at Labour's spontaneous combustion. Depriving them of the bogeyman of Left-wing Labour, would deprive them of the reason most people vote for them.
ReplyDeleteHow would he know? There is no evidence that he has ever voted Conservative at a General Election.
DeleteAlthough he says that he voted Labour in 1987, and it is impossible to see how else he might have voted in 1970, 1974, 1974 again, or 1979. He probably voted for the SDP in 1983. He certainly did not vote Tory. From 1992 onwards, his contempt for the Tories has been very vocal.
The biggest mass political movement that anyone can remember in England is not "spontaneous combustion".
Nor is having written the proper versions of a dozen policies given half-baked implementation in the first solely Conservative Budget for 19 years.
Mass movement? I haven't laughed so hard in days. The "mass movement" is mostly Tories signing up to finish the Labour Party for a laugh.
ReplyDeleteCorbyn had to take the unprecedented step of warning he only wants "genuine supporters" to sign up because even he knows what's going on.
Mass movement?
If anyone does really like Corbyn, wait until they find out what he thinks of free movement of peoples or the present situation in Calais (a Corbyn Government would tell the French it;s inhumane to stop any of them coming here) or the IRA or indeed the monarchy.
Wait until they find out how many people he thinks need to pay much, much more tax.
Once the joke has subsided, he'll be publicly ruined and so will his sorry party.
What, tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of them? More than the entire membership of the Conservative Party?
DeleteAt the end of all of this, Labour Party membership will be larger than the remaining circulation of the Daily Telegraph.
Toby Young groupies are turning out by the thousand in Preston and Liverpool, Birmingham and Coventry, are they? There were 170,000 of them cheering Corbyn ecstatically at the Durham Miners' Gala, were there? They all turned out to the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Festival and Rally, did they?
Suddenly, you are not the story. Suddenly, anything else at all is getting any kind of coverage. And you cannot stand it.
On the Robin Hood tax, if someone wants to implement one, by international agreement on all the trading centres, then that's fine.
ReplyDeleteThose who call for a Robin Hood tax that mysteriously only hits London, (and not the other financial centres equally responsible for the financial crash) are dupes for the French and Germans.
And who has punished Gordon Brown and the Labour politicians who helped bring about the crash by failing to regulate the City at the time?
Is there a tax they can all be made to pay?
That's not the worst idea you've ever had.
Delete