It feels vulgar to mention that abolishing or significantly reducing inheritance tax would benefit Rishi Sunak's daughters to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. But that is the case, and their good fortune would be on the backs of millions of people who were very poor even if they were claiming Universal Credit fraudulently, since no one on, say, an MP's basic salary of £86,584 per year, fiddles an extra 90 quid a week, if that. Yet all we hear from the Labour Party is that none of this would go far enough. The last Labour Government effected the biggest upward redistribution of wealth in British history.
Still, when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
Not pulling your punches.
ReplyDeleteYou know me.
DeleteInheritance is a fundamentally conservative idea-passing your money into your children and grandchildren is the embodiment of Edmund Burke’s description of society as a contract between the dead, the living and those yet to be born. It is also the embodiment of the married family which is the basis of conservatism. Inheritance tax taxes people twice on earnings they’ve already paid taxes on all their life and penalises people for doing the right thing and saving for their children instead of spending on themselves.It is anti conservative and any proper “Conservative Party” would abolish it.
ReplyDeleteAnd pay the electoral price. Although to whom, these days?
DeleteWhether it’s popular is a separate question to whether it’s right. But inheritance tax also happens to be massively unpopular. Scrapping inheritance tax is a win-win, both conservative and popular.
ReplyDeleteIt is unpopular because far more people think that they would pay it. They would not like what would have to be done to pay for its abolition.
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