GRASSROOTS: Budget 2014 preview: Increasing the personal allowance is the wrong priority for low earners

19/03/2014, 10:00:11 AM

by Simon Bartram

Today we can expect a lot of boasting from Conservatives and Lib Dems about how they have raised the personal allowance, as if that is a faultless defence against any accusation that the poorest are being hit the hardest.

For the 2013/14 tax year, individuals earning less than £100,000 did not pay tax on the first £9,440. This personal allowance is set to rise to £10,000 for 2014/15, saving basic rate tax payers £112 (20% of £560), and Nick Clegg is pushing for the allowance to be raised still further to £10,500 for 2015/16. The extra £500 increase, this is estimated to cost the Treasury £1 billion.

Since personal allowances have rocketed from £6,475 to potentially £10,500, this must surely be one of the most recognisable changes that the coalition has enacted, and it is a one which they ceaselessly flaunt to demonstrate their egalitarian credentials.

Yet this is a very inefficient way of targeting the lowest earners in our society, given that everyone earning up to £100,000 gains from having a personal allowance (above £100,000 your personal allowance decreases gradually to zero), and, of course, households with two earners will prosper more than single occupant households. Some of those households would already be benefiting from the tax breaks for married couples where £1,000 of the personal allowance can be transferred to a spouse.

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UNCUT: Budget 2014 preview: Labour must change the language it uses to talk about business and economics

19/03/2014, 07:00:50 AM

by Rob Marchant

Today Britain’s political focus turns, as it always does sooner or later, to the economy. It is the last Budget which will come in time to make much of a difference for the election, an election for which all parties now start to gradually gather together their support from various quarters and interest groups.

Osborne will set out his pre-election stall and Miliband will respond. We have yet to see just how he will respond, but it seems pretty likely that it will be along the lines of his op-ed in yesterday’s Guardian.

Reading it, thankfully, Miliband seems to have learned his lesson from the awful “predators and producers” speech of the party’s 2012 conference and is now more careful with his wording. But if you want to really understand what a politician is thinking on a particular subject, you should look to their advisers on that subject; those who may unguardedly say what their bosses cannot. More of that later.

Now, one notable absence – or, more unkindly, gaping hole – in the 2010 election campaign was any noticeable support from the business community. A stony silence replaced the modest set of endorsers for the party’s business policies who had previously spoken in support of the party. And that was in the days of Prime Minister Brown, whose administration certainly had a more business-friendly character than the party’s current leadership.

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GRASSROOTS: Tony Benn and the power of “Utopia”

18/03/2014, 01:39:29 PM

by Glenn Edwards

Last week, the country lost one of its few great conviction politicians. Tony Benn, aged 88, has served as an enduring inspiration for those on the far Left who remain disillusioned with the gradual drift of UK politics towards a neo-liberal consensus. Ever the most ferocious critic of capitalism, his view of Britain as a country surrendering itself with increasing pace to destructive market forces is familiar to most.

Unfortunately I did not have the privilege of personally meeting Benn. But I did once get an opportunity to hear him speak at the Peterhouse Politics Society in Cambridge. I wanted to ask him a question relating to an essay I was writing at the time about Utopianism in political life, and luckily I got my chance. I asked him “What does Utopia mean to you?”, a rather gentle question I thought, considering he’d just taken a bit of an onslaught from several conservative-minded students in the room.

Following on from a very heated discussion about financial incentives, my question was met with unsurprising laughter from all round- but Benn’s answer drew the most inviolable of silences.

He said that “Utopia” is often used as a dirty word to denounce ambitious and courageous thinking in politics. He said that it had become a sort of trump card against all ideas not sufficiently steeped in reality or cynicism towards human behaviour. A catch-all term to “put down progressive forces” of all shapes and colours. But, crucially, he said that it is always Utopian and idealistic thinking that “rallies people against injustice”, paradoxically bringing about the change that was previously thought impossible.

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UNCUT: How does Labour get its economic message across?

17/03/2014, 04:35:39 PM

by Jonathan Todd

“The last Labour government,” The Times front page last Friday reported Ed Balls as saying, “didn’t regulate the financial services in a tough enough way.” They reported this as “the closest to an acknowledgement of personal responsibility” for the 2008 financial crisis. Yet, given that Balls has said similar things in the past and is silent on whether the last government spent too much, it seems a relatively mild contrition.

Apparently, there are a range of views within the party as to how Labour should address a central Tory attack: “Why hand the keys back to the guy who crashed the car?” “Senior figures close to Tony Blair have been urging a more aggressive rebuttal”, The Times report. “Ed Miliband’s allies want to focus voters’ attention on the future.”

If Blair is advocating an aggressive rebuttal, I imagine he means on behalf of the 1997 to 2007 government, rather than the Gordon Brown administration. It’s a stretch to imagine Balls running on a “Tony was right, Gordon was wrong” campaign.

The debate over how Labour wins the economic argument was also considered in the book that Uncut launched at party conference. “We might change the conversation,” I wrote, “in which the Tories present us as addicted to spending by changing what people think of our past (“It was the banks, not us”) or what people think we think about our past (“It was partly us but we’ve learned our lesson”) or what people think about our future (“Here’s why it will be different next time”).”

Thus, Balls seems to want to say “It was partly us but we’ve learned our lesson”, while Miliband appears to want to argue “Here’s why it will be different next time”. In these terms, the approach advocated by Uncut is closest to that of Milband. “Because there is a limit to how much repositioning Labour can credibly make this side of the general election, we focus on the future.”

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UNCUT: Happy St. Patrick’s Day. As they say in Montserrat

17/03/2014, 09:34:16 AM

by Kevin Meagher

There are only two countries in the world where St. Patrick’s Day is a recognised public holiday, the Republic of Ireland (obviously enough) and Montserrat. Yes, that Montserrat, the tiny Caribbean island where, by the mid-1600s, Irish slaves made up two thirds of the island’s population.

Yes, you read that right: Irish slaves. The practice began in the first decades of the 17th Century with the ‘sale’ of 30,000 Irish political prisoners, in what would become a depressingly recurrent theme in Irish history. Between the start of the English Civil War and Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland, around 300,000 Irish were sold into slavery, men, women and children alike.

Men at arms went first, then their wives and children were sold separately never to be reunited again. A further half a million Irish were killed during this period, with the country’s population falling from 1.6 million in 1641 to just 600,000 by 1652. It’s hard to determine who were the less fortunate, the dead or the enslaved.

Irish children were stripped not only of their families and liberty, but also their faith and ethnic identity, with many having their names changed for good measure. During the 1650s, over 100,000 of them between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England.

Many young girls were sold into what we would now term sex slavery. Plantation masters bred them with more expensive African slaves to save themselves the transit costs of importing new African slaves from greater distances. This heart-breaking and inhuman practice was eventually outlawed, but it’s fair to say this is a tale we’re not used to hearing.

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UNCUT: Benn and Thatcher will be remembered long after their colourless contemporaries

15/03/2014, 08:00:56 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Passing away at eighty-eight years of age represents a good innings in anyone’s book. Indeed, it’s a score the late Tony Benn also shares with Margaret Thatcher, which may, on the face of it, seem a provocative comparison.

After all, the two of them were on opposite sides of every major issue of the 1980s: the miners’ strike, nuclear disarmament, Ireland, South Africa, monetarism. But their personalities and approaches to politics were strikingly similar.

They were both driven, uncompromising characters; self-confident in what they said and thought. Equally, they were divisive, impulsive and reckless figures. Yes, they stuck to their guns, but often long after it was sensible to do so.

Both believed in the sovereignty of Parliament. Both were instinctively Eurosceptic. And both were adored by the radical sections of their parties, to the cold fury of the pragmatists.

On a personal level, Benn, like Thatcher, enjoyed a happy marriage and both were noted for the small personal kindnesses that so many other leading politicians are seemingly incapable of offering. Likewise, they exuded that other-worldy quality that surely served to insulate them from the brickbats that were thrown at both of them for so long.

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UNCUT: Ed’s new policy on Europe gives us the leadership we need

14/03/2014, 04:58:25 PM

by Alan Donnelly

Pro-Europe Labourites have been waiting for leadership on Europe and now we have it. The dilemma for the party was always this: unable to be unabashedly pro-Europe because of Eurosceptic polling, unable to refuse a referendum because of some in the party, yet secretly eager to build a positive reform agenda for the EU.

There was a period of time last year in which every PMQs was dominated by the referendum question, with Cameron urging Ed to say yes or no, and claiming he was the big man for giving the people a say.

He no longer has that card to play. Ed has set out Labour’s position clearly: only if there are further transfers of power will Labour hold a referendum. He has also been clear that on that basis he thinks there will not be one.

Cameron now has little to go on, and will be exposed as being in a weak position on Europe, pushed this way and that by his backbenchers.

Instead of attacking the reasons for the policy, Tories are claiming it is unclear. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Do we offer a referendum come what may? No. Do we want a referendum? No. Why? Because it’s counterproductive to reform, it’s unnecessary, and in the end will not “put the issue to bed” at all.

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UNCUT: Please, let’s remember Tony Benn and Bob Crow for who they were, not bland Diana-fied national treasures

14/03/2014, 10:32:06 AM

by Atul Hatwal

To hear tributes to Tony Benn this morning and Bob Crow earlier in the week, is to enter an alternate reality, one of saccharine reflection and anodyne dolour.

In the myriad of CGI memories that are being publicly broadcast, the defining characteristic that made Tony Benn and Bob Crow national figures is all too often omitted: threat.

There are lots of committed socialists who lead their lives, unflinching in their beliefs and whose passing is not remembered.

What made Tony Benn and Bob Crow different was that they attained positions where their proximity to power meant they threatened the status quo in their respective worlds.

Threat isn’t a bad thing. It’s the essential precursor of change and both reveled in their ability to threaten the established order. But it brings with it costs: confrontation, fear and anger.

To overlook the visceral conflict which both generated is to suck the vigour and colour out of their professional lives. Without at least acknowledging this threat, the commemorations lapse into the North Korean.

We remember Tony Benn and Bob Crow because they were men of consequence. For many that consequence was far from benign. In the case of Tony Benn in the early 1980s, it threatened the future existence of the Labour party.

Both men were comfortable with confronting opposition and crushing it under foot. They were there to fight and be fought.

To recall the passion, bitterness and division does not sully their memory. Quite the reverse. It is why they are remembered, because they mattered and people cared enough about what they were doing to get involved, either for or against them.

The Dianafication of the deaths of Tony Benn and Bob Crow is perhaps the least fitting tribute possible to the lives they led. They were not bland national treasures but powerful and threatening political figures.

Along-side the warmer words about their personal virtues, it’s worth remembering this. For people in the business of attaining and wielding power, such as Tony Benn and Bob Crow, to adapt a common refrain following Diana’s death, it’s what they would have wanted.

Atul Hatwal is editor of Uncut

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UNCUT: Labour prepares to re-write Collins party reform package

13/03/2014, 01:08:46 PM

by Atul Hatwal

A fortnight on from Labour’s special conference and major change is on the agenda for Ed Miliband’s flagship party reforms.

The Labour leadership was able to secure strong backing for the Collins review from the unions largely because it delegated resolution of much of the contentious detail to a separate “implementation group”, to be set up following the special conference.

This group, comprising union and party representatives, has now been formed and outstanding questions need answers.

Immediately, problems are emerging in two areas: how the unions’ new political funds will be administered, and the role of union members in elections held before the end of the five year Collins’ process.

First, on the arrangements for the new structure of the political funds, the unions are split.

Broadly, the majority of the unions envisage a version of the Unison model.

This is where there are, in effect, two political funds: a general political fund, which is not used to fund Labour, and an affiliated or “Labour link” fund, which is used to support the party.

Where a trade unionist decides that they do not want their political fund contributions to support Labour, they all go into the general fund.

Where they want to financially support Labour, their contributions are split between the two funds.

The defining rule about the general fund is that its resources cannot be donated by the union to the Labour party.

Sounds simple.

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UNCUT: Oh dear Ed, this Europe policy is a disaster

12/03/2014, 11:53:18 AM

by Anthony Bonneville

Today, Ed Miliband blew it.

Contrary to some of the warm words from the likes of Martin Sorrell and Peter Mandelson, effectively ruling out a referendum has sabotaged Labour’s last chance to win over a strong coalition of business backers, not to mention irrevocably divide the Tories.

Labour is largely united on the benefits of staying in Europe. Trade, growth, jobs and the environment are all policy areas wholly dependent on our positive relations with the continent.

It’s a strong case but one that our frontbenchers seem reluctant to make.

The media is largely hostile and in the hurly burly of daily political debate, it’s understandable that Labour politicians prioritise issues more immediately relevant to voters.

Yes, today Ed Miliband gave a speech on Europe, but how many more times will he mention the subject in the next year?

It’s clear that today’s speech was an exercise in box ticking, in doing the bare minimum before abandoning the European battlefield.

If we, as pro-Europeans, want to play a positive role in Europe, we can’t do so without the engagement of the British public. There is a debate that is being conducted and right now Labour isn’t even in the chamber.

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