What pleasure it would give me to take a rolled up copy of today's Times, with his splendid article denouncing the nutty fringes of the Tory right, and lodge it somewhere delicate on Heffer, Redwood and anyone else silly enough to join the 'tax cuts from day 1' brigade.
Danny gives the lie to the rumours of a Cameron / Osbourne split over spending anyway but what struck me over that ridiculous 'hares and tortoises' debate is that those happy to be labelled hares seemed to monumentally miss the point - the hare lost. I've long argued against the notion that cutting taxes is some sort of fundamental Tory shibboleth. Spending wisely and acknowledging that the state isn't always the best provider is but that's not the same thing as cutting taxes:
Likewise with the phrase 'stealth taxes' - it may resonate with instinctive conservatives who are suspicious of taxation in general (particularly indirect taxation) but it's not clear how it lands outside that constituency. Since we're a reasonably wealthy country anyway I suspect that for many people the idea that record sums can be found for investment in public services with little or no increase in direct taxation is actually a rather neat fiscal trick - "sure the money may still come from me but if I don't really notice it's gone..." This attitude may horrify some but I suspect it's more common than you'd think and particularly so among the very people who's attention Cameron needs to capture.
Again, Danny gets it right:
Danny gives the lie to the rumours of a Cameron / Osbourne split over spending anyway but what struck me over that ridiculous 'hares and tortoises' debate is that those happy to be labelled hares seemed to monumentally miss the point - the hare lost. I've long argued against the notion that cutting taxes is some sort of fundamental Tory shibboleth. Spending wisely and acknowledging that the state isn't always the best provider is but that's not the same thing as cutting taxes:
"The Tories have now fought two elections advancing an immediate cut in spending and short-term tax cuts. Twice this has been rejected by voters, twice it has come close to unravelling during the campaign. It is preposterous to suggest that the reason for this failure was that the party did not try hard enough to sell the package"Quite. I've said before that despite the best efforts of the likes of the Daily Mail, Telegraph or ConservativeHome I don’t think there is any settled view among 'joe public' that taxes are particularly high. The regularly quoted stats on Government receipts as a % of GDP may be accurate but they are arrived at via a complex calculation that includes business taxes, fiscal drag, adjustments for mortgages etc. There’s actually a very weak relationship between them and the actual experience of many people. However enthralled bloggers, political hacks and party activists may be at the content of the latest OECD or ONS research paper, the average tax-payer will make their assessment by more mundane means and there's little evidence of real concern at that level. When the Conservatives were last in office people rioted about the poll tax and even after that the country elected another Tory government – if that level of anger and indignation couldn’t shift a sitting government it’s hard to see how stroppy Daily Mail headlines about ‘tax burdens’ will.
Likewise with the phrase 'stealth taxes' - it may resonate with instinctive conservatives who are suspicious of taxation in general (particularly indirect taxation) but it's not clear how it lands outside that constituency. Since we're a reasonably wealthy country anyway I suspect that for many people the idea that record sums can be found for investment in public services with little or no increase in direct taxation is actually a rather neat fiscal trick - "sure the money may still come from me but if I don't really notice it's gone..." This attitude may horrify some but I suspect it's more common than you'd think and particularly so among the very people who's attention Cameron needs to capture.
Again, Danny gets it right:
"Any sensible decentralisation of health or education is going to cost more money before it begins to save anything. Tories need to make health and other public services more productive and more consumer-oriented but this will not reduce tax bills in the first Parliament. It doesn't work simply to assert that billions have been wasted on an unreformed NHS. Just because more money hasn't made it better doesn't mean that the opposite holds. Tories can save money, they can cut taxes, they can reform services, they can reduce government. But to believe that they can do these things all at the same time and all in the first years of a Parliament is like believing that the international banking crisis is sexist"....and the tortoise passes the finish line....
5 Comments:
Since we're a reasonably wealthy country anyway ...
... in hock and up to the neck in household credit debt ...
Poverty in England
1 Redwood- I would not put John Redwood in the same bracket as Simon Heffer. as Heffer is a Fool if occasionally in the Shakespearian sense …a wise fool. Redwood is not .(Read his superb blog)
2 Tax Cuts -The reaction to IHT cuts shows there are votes in tax cuts . I think it is probably well known ….although this is not in itself enough.
3 Tax Levels - The vagueness has been used by Labou .Niall Ferguson gives a figure of 38% to 45% as the true figure of what he calls State governed expenditure increase . He is not by any means right wing . 30% public expenditure increase is more to the point . The truth is that experience of taxes was masked by growth and public sector pay rises. Take them out and you have quite a different picture . That picture is emerging
4Nutters -This being the case John Redwood would argue , as would many others like Irwin Serltzer , not on your “nutter” list …( which I regard with aristocratic disdain) , tax cuts are doubly essential as to avoid them will only send us further into a vicious circle of falling revenues tax increases and so on.
5 Indirect Taxes Are Better- Conservatives dislike dishonesty of course and therefore the ‘stealth’ of stealth taxes . On the other had taxing things other than work risk taking and employment is very much approved of . Cuts to income tax are therefore needed for moral societal and economic reasons.
6 The problem is the level of debt - Brown has painted himself into a corner and it is this that will make up front tax cuts difficult . This is , by the way , how Cameron himself has defended his position and also Nick Boles on his behalf . He is , of course motivated by political calculation as well as pragmatism
7 Finkelstein is just a scribbler-Decentralising Education would not cost money Fink is just making this up . The Swedish model Cameron is adopting is already said to be in Labour’s copy book ( New Statesman this week) and could immediately save money and produce results as it has elsewhere . As for health there are massive day one savings to be made and I doubt Finkelstein actually the slightest idea .I think we will need hard times before the political will is strong enough though, and here Redwood is clumsy. A responsible government would act earlier …but its a lot to ask
8-On a lighter note - Concerning your older-than-the -quills bon mot about Hares and Tortoises ,can I recommend you read “The True tale of the Hare and the Tortoise” by Lord Dunsay . It is a gem of sustained political anti-fable . As in the better know version , the Tortoise wins ( because the Hare cannot be bothered) , however the parable is tested a touch further….
“…and even to this day “ a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness” is a catch phrase in the house of the snail
And the reason that this version of the race is not widely known is that very few of those who witnessed it survived the great forest fire that happened shortly afterwards . It came upon the weald by night with a great wind. The hare and the tortoise and very few of the beasts saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge f the trees, and hurriedly called a meeting to decide which messenger they should send to warn the beasts of the forest.
They sent the Tortoise”
Would you send the Tortoise Cassilis ?
(Comment from Samuel Coates, having trouble logging in!)
a) Do you and Danny really think we hadn't thought about the fact the tortoise won when we came up with the analogy?! The hare only lost because it got complacent. The point is that there are good sides to both approaches.
b) It's revealing that you make your case purely on what you (I think incorrectly) perceive to be public opinion, not on what the country and economy needs.
Sam,
Take your point that there's merit in both approaches.
My concern (and this speaks to your second point) is that there isn't the public appetite for a tax-obsessed tortoise to gain any ground. Outside the realms of the already converted (Tory bloggers, the Mail, Telegraph etc.) there no meaningful clamour for tax-cuts and certainly no national consensus on it. I'd probably agree with you that something like that is needed and perhaps the Tories need to be bolder in advocating it but the lesson of the hare / tortoise thing is how easy complacency comes about - the Tories have no real public disquiet to exploit here, they'd be trying to stoke it up and that's dangerous....
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