July tax receipts by HM Revenue & Customs weren't bad, so yesterday Tory MPs.were calling for tax cuts.
Of course they were. Whatever the situation, and wherever the news, Tory MPs call for tax cuts.
They do not call for tax cuts because they think they will stimulate the economy. After all, they accept the right of Bank of England to seek to destroy the economy, so that cannot be their reason.
Instead they always call for tax cuts because they hate the state. That hatred fuels their demand for cuts because their belief is that the state is funded by tax, so cutting tax must result in a smaller state, in their opinion. They reveal their total lack of understanding of government financing by thinking this, but ignorance has never been an impediment for them.
They are always careful not to say what services they wish to cut when making this demand, although that they must be doing so follows from their demand that the government's books must balance, although they have no idea why that should be the case (when it isn't).
They are also very careful not to point out the distributional consequences of their demands, which almost always benefit the best off most.
In total then, the Tories demanding tax cuts leave a very great deal unsaid. That suits them. They like simple demands, like ‘cut tax'.
But we don't live in a simple world.
And politicians should deal in grown up politics, with all their meanings face up on the table.
If politics of that sort was on offer the sham behind the Tory demand for tax cuts would be exposed because right now, because except for those on lower pay there is no case for tax cuts, and they would almost certainly be better served by benefit increases in most cases.
It would be so good to have that type of politics, where meanings and consequences were clear. But that would require politicians who knew what they were for and what they were doing.
I can dream, can't I?
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I see Jacob Rees-Moog was explicit in saying part of the cuts should be to abolish inheritance tax – we can only hope he is in fear of imminent mortality.
I think we make a big mistake not understanding politics is to a large extent about cults and cults in turn are about people wanting to value themselves which they do by “projecting” as the psychologists tell us their views about how they think the world should work for them. So hatred of the state is largely about themselves not feeling valued and interpreting the state wanting to further devalue them. Having a childhood where you feel valued naturally develops into a mental frame of mind where you value others but understand it’s always a matter of seeking to balance valuing yourself and others and of course that’s precisely why we do have states and especially deploying democracy to help with that balancing.
I think we can see this desire to belong to a cult and therefore be valued in many voters refusal to engage with the facts and to actually research how things really work like the country’s monetary system for example. I think politicians like Keir Starmer consciously take advantage of the longing to be valued as part of a cult which helps explain why supporters ignore all his broken pledges, u-turns and indications he thinks like a Tory with a hidden bias against the state.
I read what the Republican candidates stand for. It is a similar list of proposals -balance the books, cut government spending, tax cuts, impose abortion bans, take further restrictions off guns, fighting a cold war with China, draconian measures on immigration, fighting ‘woke’, and , in some cases, Ramaswamy and DeSantis, cut back on aid to Ukraine. Some of them still refuse to condemn Trump’s actions.
It looks like pandering to the lowest common denominator of voter.
Like the Stuart kings before them, who secretly took huge bribes from the French king to betray Britain, there is nothing the Tories will not do to make themselves richer and more powerful at the expense of everybody else that lives in the UK.
That the Tory Party’s earliest origins goes back to those years is well known, perhaps less well understood is that the betrayal, arrogance and greed exhibited then is still a major part of the Tory DNA.
Greed all goes back a long time in the history of this country. The British historian Marc Morris with his excellent books “The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England” and the sequel “The Norman Conquest” makes this very clear:-
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anglo-Saxons-History-Beginnings-England/dp/1786330997/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Y3GZE2Y4719N&keywords=marc+morris+anglo+saxons&qid=1692876826&sprefix=Marc+Morris%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Norman-Conquest-Marc-Morris/dp/0099537443/ref=d_pd_sbs_sccl_2_1/261-5842838-9269144?pd_rd_w=3h1bk&content-id=amzn1.sym.c633ef94-5925-4800-8916-1372f3be4382&pf_rd_p=c633ef94-5925-4800-8916-1372f3be4382&pf_rd_r=Z71Y7PMGP07ZJXP3PQZ1&pd_rd_wg=UYUVt&pd_rd_r=d0e772cc-d9ba-48da-a68a-f36485c35661&pd_rd_i=0099537443&psc=1
From these two books alone you get a real feel for why this country’s ended up the way it has.
Great post Richard.
A politics that governs for everyone is sorely needed right now.
It feels to me more like ‘back seat driving’
Not asking for anything that might do anything useful, for example increase Child Benefit, reduce the drink drive limit etc but which if enacted would simply result in sometimes random cuts in other benefits or services provided by Government for no obvious purpose
This is what has happened to Public Health England since they decided to cut money going into the NHS. It’s frightening.
https://chpi.org.uk/papers/after-the-pandemic-is-the-new-public-health-system-in-england-fit-for-purpose/
People are having to pay for their health already, or go without.
https://chpi.org.uk/blog/paying-for-healthcare-on-the-never-never-in-the-uk-how-has-it-come-to-this/
Okay for well off tories, though.
The Americans developed the derogatory term “Mickey Mouse”:-
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mickey%20mouse
I would argue that unless you properly understand how money is created and used as a transaction medium you have a “Mickey Mouse” democracy where mindless cults replace critical thinking!
As you and Stephanie Kelton have said repeatedly, tax cuts obviously make the rich richer, but the main purpose is to be able to claim that any spending the Tories don’t like is unaffordable. That’s why Truss’s budget made her a hero to the party – until the ‘markets’ monster they have created turned on her and b*ggered her plan. The sooner the truths of MMT are accepted the better. But don’t hold your breath. There’s a determination never to let those truths see the light of day.
Disagree very slightly. I think the more Machiavellian Tory MP’s see value in reducing “revenue” so that cuts can be justified. However, for the majority of the drones I suspect it is a simple article of faith that people who pay a lot of tax (I.e. people like them, and those they look up to) should pay less. They may also be aware that that plays well with the aspirational middle classes, who are too naive to realise that a core purpose of the tax-cutting agenda is to redistribute wealth upwards to the 1%. I doubt many of them are sophisticated enough to see tax cuts as a sneaky way of cutting public services.