Democracy Inaction

[steepholm]

I saw a Channel 4 debate about the economy last night, with party bigwigs, economists, business leaders, senior civil servants et al. They talked a great deal about ways to raise tax: VAT, corporation tax, National Insurance, duties on fuel, alcohol, etc. But again, not one person mentioned the possibility of raising the basic rate of income tax. Am I the only person in the country who thinks this at least worth considering?

 

I guess I’m still officially a floating voter, though fluttering only the shortish distance between the Greens and the LibDems. Meanwhile, I've made a little table to help me not decide who to choose.

 

	Pros	Cons	Misc
Conservative	1.      Will ditch ID cards   2.      Er, that’s it	1.      Pretty much everything else   2.      The plan to give tax breaks to the rich (e.g. city bankers) is crazy, but of a piece with the rest of their economics, which seem to have been developed in the trust funds of Eton.   3.      DC, George Osborne and several other members of the Bullingdon Club Tory front bench seriously give me the creeps	Why am I even putting them on the list? I lived through Thatcher, for goodness sake!
Green	1.      I agree with their approach to the environment, obviously   2.      I instinctively like most of their other policies, even though they sound suspiciously as if they started life on the back of a beer mat.   3.      Very few vested interests.	1.      Caroline Lucas blustered in interview. Didn’t inspire confidence.   2.      Are their policies as are hardheaded and ‘costed’ as they claim? Really?
Labour	1.      They do have some competent people, as well as idiots like Margaret Hodge (although I do hope she doesn’t lose her seat to the BNP, I guess).   2.      I don’t think they’ve done badly with the economy during the crisis, given the circumstances. (But they did more to create those circumstances than they’ll admit.)	1.      A long track record of breaking manifesto promises (e.g. introducing student fees)   2.      There’s a strong authoritarian strain, as shown in their measures for ID cards, detention without trial, etc etc. For me, this is a deal-breaker.   3.      They look tired out, poor dears.	Would a Lib-Lab coalition be the best plausible outcome of this election? At this stage, almost certainly.
LibDem	1.      They seem to take redistribution of wealth more seriously than the other big two.   2.      Will scrap Trident   3.      Electoral reform for the house of Commons. (But would they make the house of Lords democratic? Or give devolution to the English regions? No talk of that.) 4.      Less inclined to blow dog whistles over immigration.	1.      Clegg revealed as something of a one-trick pony in debate. I also suspect him of being far more right-wing than he appears.   2.      I don’t share their EUphoria	They might  act as a brake on the Tories in coalition, but I’d hate to think my vote had let the Tories in, even in an ameliorated form.

 

 

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Re: income tax - raise the basic rate, raise the threshhold. Collect more money from the people who have money, save admin scraping in coppers from those who don't. And while you're at it, stop wasting money on pursuing 'social security scroungers' who are mainly scrounging very small sums, and put your effort into collecting large amounts of unpaid tax. (I simplify, but that's the outline). But politicians aren't allowed to say that raising taxes is a good idea - and the media won't allow them to. I woke up to some journalist on the Today programme talking about how no-one wanted higher taxes...

Re: your vote - some much depends on your constituency, I think. The Greens won't get to form a government, but could form a useful opposition (or maybe your vote could save their deposit). Then again, if the Liberals don't do well this time, we can say goodbye to any idea of electoral reform. Then again... as you say!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I agree with all that - and I like the LibDem commitment to raising the tax threshhold to £10,000 for just that reason. Income tax also seems a very efficient way of collecting tax, since so many people are in PAYE, and unlike VAT it's not regressive. Seems a no-brainer. (It's not as if not raising taxes is an option, so let's raise it from those who can best afford it.)

I made a strategic decision not to vote tactically some time ago, but I live in a Lab/LibDem marginal, so I have the luxury of being able to do that without any real fear of letting the Tory sneak in. At least, if they sneak in here they'll have won such a large majority that my vote will be the least of my worries!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I find people are very ignorant on how tax works. They often think, for instance, that if you get into a marginal tax bracket you have to pay that tax rate on all your earnings, rather than the slice above. I think PAYE, while generally an excellent idea, makes this worse because it's all done for you and invisible. Same with VAT, nobody knows about it really. In Canada, the VAT equivalent is done at the till, so you see that the price is X and you actually pay X +tax. While in some ways infuriating (you can't sort out your exact change while standing in line without doing math) it makes you much more aware that it is a real tax and you're really paying it every time you buy something.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I find your arguments and priorities depressingly sensible. Depressingly, because obviously many people think quite otherwise, and I'm baffled as to why they should.

Whatever happened to the days when, instead of a LibDem vote letting the Tories in, one voted LibDem to keep the Tories out?

[sovay]

Meanwhile, I've made a little table to help me not decide who to choose.

It's a great table, though. As a non-participant, I find it useful.

[briankeaney.livejournal.com]

Reasons for voting Labour not LIb Dem:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/02/nick-cohen-labour-liberal-democrats

Reasons for not voting Green:
They are planning to solve all our problems by using pixie dust

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, Brian. The article certainly has some good reasons for not voting at all, but not so much for voting Labour, it seems to me. I don't buy that it's any longer the party of the poor or of the labour movement. They introduced the minimum wage, and I give them credit for that; but thirteen years into a Labour government, Thatcher's anti-union legislation remains virtually untouched, and whenever there's an industrial dispute (recent examples being the PO and BA) government ministers line up to criticize the workers for striking, rather than than the management. Also, inequality has grown rather than shrunk under Labour - substantially so. All the above might have been expected from one-nation Tories as much as Labour.

I agree that the Greens aren't ready for government (not that that's a realistic prospect, of course), but un-thought-through as many of their ideas are, they at least recognize a basic truth that all the other parties seem committed to trying to forget: i.e. that you can't have an economic model based on continual growth, when your resources are finite in themselves, and have to be shared amongst an ever-increasing population. That strikes me as a pixie-dust idea in itself, one that can only be sustained in the short term if we agree to shunt the problem onto a) the third world and b) our descendants. That's not an attitude I can live with or vote for.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

Having had the dubious pleasure of reading (well, skimming in parts) the manifestos of the three main parties, I would hazard a guess that the reason no-one has brought up an income tax rise is that none of them really talk much about taxes increases at all. All of them have similarly tiny plans for cutting budgets/raising taxes compared with their commonly agreed fiscal challenge of cutting/raising around £37 billion a year (amusingly, Tories have the biggest gap in their plans despite all their tough economic talk). I bet the Lib Dems at least have thought about an income tax rise but just haven't brought it up in debates as there really isn't any need when none of the parties are outlining tough choices.

I'm a swinging voter too, though as I'm in a very safe Conservative seat it probably doesn't really matter who I vote for. I wish there was some way of rounding up all the non-Tory (and non-BNP!) voters and combining our votes for either Lab or LibDem! Labour certainly come across as tired, even in their manifesto, and are irritating in their recent politics (eg attacking the Tories for wanting to means test child trust funds and tax credits - are we in a world gone mad?)

I want to like the Greens, but whenever I spend any amount of time reading their policies I feel like shaking them, and telling them to go think some more.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm voting Lava-Tory...
http://tinyurl.com/3a9htyb

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

As I write, the headline on the BBC election site read "Party leaders in final push for votes"...