Labour should impose a higher tax rate on higher earners and close the myriad loopholes exploited by both corporations and wealthy individuals. They should introduce progressive VAT. Make changes to council tax. Capital Gains Tax should be increased. And that’s just the start of a long list of progressive changes that should be made.
Of course, the rightwing media will start howling at any progressive change. And that’s why Labour has to start by taking on the press head-on and changing the way people think, not kowtowing to their billionaire overlords.
The first step in any successful political campaign is to change people’s minds.
Yep I think the opposite to @aussielad as well. The EU would firm up the message to all existing EU members that no-one is better off out than in, it would also mean adding a very large European economy into the EU bloc, and finally it would bring that large economy in at the bottom of the food chain - the UK wouldn’t get all the custom, sweetened deals they had prior to 2016.
Honestly, the UK coming back with it’s tail between it’s legs is exactly what the EU would want. For the laughs they should make it a condition that they join the Euro zone.
I agree, but I’m also convinced the line one needs to walk in the UK is so incredibly fine, Starmer could float any one of your points in the most benign language possible and he would be dead in the water.
‘We told you he was a commie!!’
Sensible taxation would become socialism and trans teachers in every classroom.
It’s the deference to the establishment, innit. Not quite sure if the UK is ready to bin that just yet…
Labour won’t be worse than the Tories. They won’t be corrupt and quasi-fascist. There won’t be billions of public money disappearing in their mates bank accounts. They won’t be chaotic, leaderless and pulled in different directions.
But anyone who thinks you can take over a country as economically broken as ours, and just throw loads of progressive left-wing policies at it is in fantasy land. You can’t click your fingers and fix thirteen years of economic mismanagement
It’s going to take years to fix this mess.
Priority number 1 for Labour should be making sure that the country never forgets who is responsible for this. The first thing I would do as a new Labour PM is commission a full inquiry into public spending with the aim of toxifying the Tory party for a generation.
I agree with the last speaker. Even if it doesn’t save a lot of money it would be the UK saying to the rest of the world that we’ve grown up, and no longer believe that a supernatural sky fairy has given one family magic blood that means they are better than everyone else.
I totally disagree. The end result of an inquiry should be legislation that tightens and controls public procurement so that this shit can’t happen again.
Asking the question ‘Where has all the fucking money gone, because nobody feels any richer?’ Is a perfectly legitimate question for Labour to ask once in office.
I think it is the priority because it underpins everything. Inequality is the root cause of all our problems. Already sickeningly rich people wanting to be even richer than they are is the cancer in our society.
Care needed here. While I agree that certain aspects need to be tightened, public procurement is currently broken and costs millions in waste. The processes required for a public body to procurement materials and or services is ridiculous. There is big change needed there.
For me the UK needs to strip out the waste from public spending. There will be some easy wins to start with I hope but progressively over time things need to be brought back to the core value of delivering a service rather than delivering a profit.
But that is the baffling thing about the UK’s position. It is not fundamentally a revenue problem. The governmental share of GDP is already incredibly high - higher than it has ever been.
Technically speaking, if they don’t have any exemptions, it’s compulsory isn’t it? I think the current cop-out is that there’s no timeframe imposed on it, but new entrants to the EU are technically required to adopt the Euro.
