The LibDems have been the first to release their manifesto for this election.
To support it, they have published their 'full costing', because woe betide any politician who now suggests that they might use a penny of the funds people want to save with the government for any social purpose.
The spending is:
I will leave others to comment on that. I like some of it. The absence of any green spending is very worrying.
The revenue is:
And this is their explanation:
The paragraph numbers flow on from their explanation of their spending, if you are wondering if something is missing.
These are my responses:
- Bank taxes, fine, but these were crude measures and something more sophisticated is needed now. They have not put enough thought into this.
- Capital gains tax is good, but why not just equalise rates for everyone and be done with it and take £12 billion instead? This is a half-hearted measure that will be complicated. The Taxing Wealth Report 2024 version is better, I suggest.
- Windfall tax, a fair suggestion. The current rules are absurd.
- Digital services tax: why not commit to an international solution? Earlier iterations of this tax have been weak.
- Buy-back tax is not an issue: most of these are already taxed. I cannot see this raising anything of consequence in the UK. It's based on a misunderstanding of how these buy-backs work here.
- Sewage tax: better regulation and not tax is the answer. This proposal is counter-productive if anything, permitting them to keep polluting.
- Tobacco tax: yes, please. But will it work?
- Private jet and aviation taxes: definitely do them.
- Tackle tax avoidance and evasion with £1 billion for HM Revenue & Customs. It looks like they have been reading the Taxing Wealth Report 2024. This could come from there.
So, good in parts, but it would have been so much easier to have made it much better and avoid some pitfalls they have walked into, not least on bank taxes, digital taxes and buy-back taxes, whilst the sewage tax is just wrong: the problem has to be solved and this assumes it continues.
One final thought: without workings that is not a full costing.
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I wonder about these ‘fully costed’ figures.
Spending equals income as we know. Once the state starts spending and the money begins to circulate, the revenues will increase. Other effects like extra health spending getting people back into work also has an effect.
Surely the ‘costing’ is something of a snapshot, not a dynamic process?
Agreed
It’s mildly ludicrous
The Lib Dems have missed out this on the revenues side:
“Implementing the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for high-emission products”
The Liberals are just tinkering at the edges of what funding is required to attain the public services essential for the wel-l being of the whole population. They really are Tories at heart even refusing to contemplate the public control of water and sewage. The “Orange Book” Liberals are out and out competitive market capitalists and they have received funding from big corporations like Rio Tinto Zinc (see the book The Prostitute State by Donnachadh McCarthy). Dont mention tuition fees and their spuport forthe Osborne/Cameron austerity and privatisation of Royal Mail…………………..
The underlying problems here are the media consensus supporting neoliberal/Thatcherian `handbag economics’ and the voting system.
The LDs have to aim to win a significant number of seats under FPTP, and if polls are to be believed may win 10% of the seats from 10% of the votes, which would be a remarkable result under FPTP. [Remember that UKIP got 0 seats (or was it 1?) from 13% of the votes in 2015.] There is better economic thinking within the LDs but it would likely ruin their chances of a breakthrough in seats if their manifesto strayed from the `your money is safe with us’ nonsense of neoliberal economics.
The LD manifesto is generally good on environmental issues, and I don’t know why this doesn’t show up in the costings. And they’re rock-solid on electoral reform. Caroline Lucas finished a discussion on Newsnight yesterday by expressing her hope for a hung parliament in which the LDs could demand proportional representation.