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October 7, 2024 - 10:00am
The goalposts are starting to shift on Labour’s taxation policies once again. Liam Byrne, a key figure in the government and chair of the Commons Business and Trade Committee, is calling on the party to raise taxes on wealth. Byrne does not just see a raid on people’s wealth as a means to raise revenue, but also as a way to curtail the rise of populism in Britain — as strange as this might seem.
Byrne is drawing on a new study that shows a strong correlation between regional income inequality and support for Reform UK. But this study only confirms what many on the Labour Left already think: populism is caused by capitalism and inequality. This is a classic in the genre of Marxist analysis. Since “there is no war but class war” — as Marx famously wrote — any anger among the working classes must be caused by class envy. Take a bite out of the wealth of the rich, the Marxist will tell you, and the working classes will be happy once more.
Labour’s juvenile retreat into theories its politicians learned in undergraduate sociology class is pushing the party, already deeply out of touch with the average Briton, into a fantasy-world of its own making. The root cause of populism is obviously not primarily economic. If you listen to those who are voting for Reform, they are quite clear that their most immediate concern is immigration.
Indeed, this is not just confined to Reform UK voters. Polling reveals that the two top issues across the country are crime and immigration. The study that shows poorer people are more concerned about these issues is an obvious “spurious correlation”: the reason for the correlation is that crime and immigration affect people in poorer areas much worse than those in wealthier areas because these areas have higher crime rates and are used to settle immigrants when they arrive as the housing is cheap.
During the election, Labour talked tough on immigration. But this is a government led by former civil servants who listen closely to what institutions such as the Office for Budget Responsibility say, and these organisations are saying that very high rates of immigration are required for the next 50 years to keep the economy ticking over. When it comes to its policy on crime, Labour is rubbing the British publics’ nose in it by releasing large numbers of prisoners back into society — presumably to commit more crime.
Labour politicians are ignoring the fact that it is their policies which are driving populism. They truly believe public concern about migration or crime is irrational, driven by “racist” impulses that should be policed — whether through re-education in schools or through actual police action — and that the real underlying issues are class-oriented and to do with the rich having too much wealth.
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Subscribe“Labour politicians are ignoring the fact that it is their policies which are driving populism. They truly believe public concern about migration or crime is irrational, driven by “racist” impulses that should be policed — whether through re-education in schools or through actual police action — and that the real underlying issues are class-oriented and to do with the rich having too much wealth.”
It is this which has led me to define the Left as “those who take the longest to understand anything.”
I believe the Left operate on the principle of levelling everybody down to the lowest common level of wealth as it will make the march to Utopia much smoother. Of course it won’t apply to the people leading the march.
Liam Byrne always was a bit of a dumbo.
But correlation is not necessarily causation. You could argue that ‘taxing the rich’ will be seen as spiteful and removing any possible personal hope for people striving to do well for themselves.
The popular aphorism for the Leave argument was ‘taking back control’. Many Reform supporters recall that fondly and wonder if Labour’s current behaviour is more like ‘impose further control’.
I guess if you truly want to tax the rich you need to tax capital and not labor in the first place. It’s not about people making 500k a year. It’s about the billions of parasitical capital which has a 100 ways the evade taxation.
Bit of a yah-boo piece not adding much to the discourse. Author uses a range of over-simplistic statements that’ll get a cheer but mislead in the process. Furthermore Byrne is not a Minister and the Labour Left is not in power, albeit pretty grumpy about that.
The mess Starmer inherited is worse than the Right were prepared to admit when in power, but is also not as bad as doom-monger like this Author might suggest either. Starmer not had a great start but it’s likely ‘chip paper’ stuff in the 5yr term he’s got if he gets his act together now. Confronting a range of challenges honestly been lacking from Govt for over a decade.
In modern times when the term “populism” is denigratwd, it seems that the person expressing it is a reactionary pushing the opposite populism.. “unpopulism” comes to mind.