There is nothing difficult about writing that down. The difficult part is getting a mandate to do it.
There is no policy there that I disagree with. The problem is that is you take that to people you don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of getting elected.
Corbyn took that proposal to the electorate - the media had a shitfit, he was smeared from all sides, the public hated him and the Tory’s got an 80 seat majority
The trouble with taxing high earners is that really big earners are very adept at keeping their money away from the tax man, so you just end up squeezing the people at the bottom of that band. They obviously don’t like it, but even the argument that most people aren’t affected isn’t that effective - the nuance is generally ignored, people see it is a tax on aspiration and hard work, and they think you’re coming from them next.
Don’t get me wrong - I think we need a much more progressive, redistributive tax system - but it’s incredibly hard to sell the electorate, and even if you somehow get in power, it’s really difficult to do.
Yes - they want a moratorium on opening new oil and gas exploration and extraction, and a phased transition from fossil fuels to cleaner forms of energy.
Just to be clear, what you are talking about here is a radical shift in the national character. It’s not a trivial thing.
People in Scandinavian countries generally pay more tax and see the value of that money being invested in services that aid the common good. We’re miles away from that.
PM2.5 is one of the three components most responsible for the air quality we notice (along with NOx and SOx), and a component of the various AQ/AQI indices - and it is the component that is most visible to us.
Corbyn created a movement big enough to get him elected as Labour Leader. However, that movement was nowhere near big enough to get him elected.
There is a difference between things being deeply felt and widely felt. Corbyn and his politics clearly had appeal amongst a relatively small number of people who felt deeply about the stuff he was talking about. But he never appealed widely enough to get those ideas into Government.
Again we find ourselves in a discussion about ideology v pragmatism. Unless you can get Corbynesque progressive policies into power, then they have all the impact of a Levellers song.
and it is incredibly difficult to do from a position of massive debt and/or deficit, because the mistakes of the past get first call on the new revenue. Paying more taxes and getting no more is not a compelling immediate proposition.
It’s worse than that. It turns out that 100% of air pollution from wood burners in eco warriors gardens is caused by wood burners in eco warriors gardens.
Exactly. If we pay more taxes, but get better services at all levels of society in exchange for the taxes, with money well invested into the good of the country, and not a piecemeal sort of a thing, fine. I do think people would do that, with the right messaging and perseverance. It would seem civilized and good. Education. Health. Transport. All tip-top, for high taxes. Fine.
But where it breaks down is if we are taxed heavily, and have nowhere near the social provisions of other European countries. It is worsened when politicians feather their own nest and award contracts to friends and cronies, draining the public purse into private wealth.
I see the UK as an unsatisfactory middle ground so it is neither one thing nor the other. There’s the hyper capitalism of the Tories and the focus on the individual to sort themselves out and make their own life. And on the other side there is the social leaning of the Labour Party, who I suspect would love to build a country in the direction of a Scandinavian country, but they would be pilloried for the high taxes it would require and might not get elected on that platform.
So we have a no man’s land where it is neither fully one nor the other.
I’m fully aware what their goals are.
And my presumption was that because true to your form, someone disagreed with them so you instantly opposed that view.
I swear if I came on here and said what a stellar politician Corbyn was, you’d manufacture a way of telling me what a cunt he is.
That’s the true definition of form
Edit
Good post above about how Labour’s hands are tied, as when they come into power, they will open the cupboard and find that it is bare. So there is little room to move.
Arguably after a succession of hits - covid, Tories, Brexit, etc. the country might come to enough consensus where a post World War Two style rebuild of society is on the cards.
