Mates’ Rates

Council Tax is going through the roof, councils are threatening to go bankrupt, and the Government is trying to work out how the BBC was to be funded into and in the middle third of the twenty-first century.

Based on an arbitrary valuation of a property that you may not own, and which in any case you could not sell without going to live up a tree or something, Council Tax ought to have been abolished years ago. Following the introduction both of the Universal Basic Income and of Modern Monetary Theory’s Job Guarantee, then Council Tax should be replaced with a voluntary flat rate charge, payable by as many adults as chose to pay it rather than restricted to one per address. Payment of that charge would acquire the right to vote and stand in local elections.

The full powers of local government would be restored, along with those of councillors within it, including the traditional committee system rather than the oligarchy that had supplanted it. The stunningly anti-democratic arrangement in urban areas whereby you could not kick out the whole council in one go would be discontinued. Throughout the country, each of us would vote for one candidate, with the requisite number elected at the end, every four years.

A suitably renamed version of the licence fee would be made voluntary, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four. One would not need to be a member of the Trust to listen to or watch the BBC, just as one does not need to be a member of the National Trust to visit its properties, or a member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be rescued by its boats.

The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the members. Each member would vote for one, with the top two elected. The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. And the term of office would be four years.

Here as elsewhere, we ought to be bypassing the weedy brains of the Liberal Establishment and the brainless brawn of the municipal Labour Right, in order to secure the representation that had never been afforded by those who had presumed to speak for our people, but never to our people. Yes, that would indeed involve doing deals with the Conservatives. We could not possibly get less out of them than we had ever managed to get out of the Keir Starmers of the world.