Level Headed

Of course the Levelling Up White Paper is not enough, but it is more than the last Labour Government ever attempted. The present Labour Leadership is devoted to the memory of New Labour's vilification of anyone who believed in proper jobs as one of "the forces of conservatism" against "the modernisers". Those latter insisted, and insist, that anyone who might be in any kind of need must simply not have tried hard enough at "Education, Education, Education".

People who think that the Conservatives have ever been "the party of low taxation" are like people who think that Labour has ever had a peaceable foreign policy. When, exactly? In the Labour case, only ever under Jeremy Corbyn, so never in government, and never with the support of any more than the tiniest handful of Labour MPs. And in the Conservative case, never, ever, ever. The question has always been what, and thus whom, to tax heavily. It has never been whether to tax heavily at all. Nor will it ever be.