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Diary of a (Maybe) Retired Pastor

Tag: Labour Party

  • Reform the House of Commons

    mayberetiredpastor

    Reform the House of Commons

    At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent.

    Daniel 6:4

    So, the manifestos of the major parties have been published and some of you may be wondering if I secretly authored the Green Party manifesto. The answer is no – but maybe they’ve been reading my blogs! I have voted Labour consistently all of my adult life (with one or two exceptions) but you might have noticed that I’m unimpressed with the present offering of Labour. Therein lies a problem with our democracy.

    At school, I was taught that government proposes and parliament (i.e the House of Commons) disposes – that is, the government proposes the laws it wants to enact and the House of Commons decides whether or not to allow the government to enact those laws. But in our modern parliament that is a myth. In reality, the government both proposes and disposes, that is, whatever the government decides it wants to do it can if it has a parliamentary majority, and because of our first-past-the-post system of election governments almost always have a majority.

    Government gets its way because MPs are completely beholden to their political parties. Individual MPs rarely actually read or examine the proposed legislation (that only happens in the Lords!). The parties instruct their MPs how to vote and MPs are punished if they step out of line. The only path to progression as an MP is through the patronage of your party. If you constantly go against the party line you do not progress as an MP and may even be refused permission to stand as a candidate at the next election (witness the Labour Party debacle over Diane Abbott). The patronage of the political parties is wielded over the whole career of the individual MP from consideration as a candidate right through to whether you can hold position in government or one of the powerful committees in Parliament.

    Before 1832 there was a system of “rotten boroughs” in the UK. The MPs for those boroughs were nominated by powerful people who owned the boroughs and consequently the MPs were beholden to those powerful people. This particular system no longer exists but has been effectively replaced by the patronage of our two party system. The MPs we elect are not answerable to us but to their party. This is every bit as corrupt as the old system of rotten boroughs.

    Constitutional reform is not on the agenda of any party (Why would it be? It’s not in their interests!) but that we need it to properly reflect our views and achieve better governance and management of the country is, in my view, unanswerable. But what sort of reform do we need?

    Parties as prospective governments need to be separated from MPs as representatives. Much as in the US, we should vote directly for whichever party we believe should be entrusted with government, but MPs need to be elected separately to parliament. Candidates for MPs should be funded and overseen by the state and not by the parties and their election should be by a form of proportional voting. Political parties offer themselves for election as the government by first-past-the-post voting. Once in government they can propose their legislative programme to MPs who are no longer beholden to their parties (if they are members of a party) and neither parties nor government can require MPs to vote in any particular way.

     This is just the barest sketch of a reform. For very many people, including myself, our present system does not work very well. No party programme entirely satisfies all our aspirations for ourselves or our communities, and we have no genuine representation by our MPs who, as individuals, might give the nuances  to legislative discussion that we desire. We need constitutional reform, but what needs to be reformed is not the House of Lords but the House of Commons.

  • Why Is Tax Bad?

    mayberetiredpastor

    Why Is Tax Bad?

    4 for [government] is God’s servant for your good. … 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.

    Romans 13:4-7

    41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’

    Mark 12:41-44

    This week’s political headlines in the UK have been dominated by the accusation that the Labour party’s spending plans would result in families having to pay an extra £2000 in tax. Apart from the dubious method of calculation and the sleight-of-hand  trickery to  make it seem as bad as possible, the real question it throws up is why should this be considered a viable method of attack by one party against another? That it is so considered is clear, Kier Starmer and the Labour Party have been vehemently denying this claim all week.

    We have a very poor and corrosive attitude to tax in our political culture. Even amongst Christians it is generally held as a bad thing, at best a necessary evil. Yet the New Testament clearly defines it as a something required by God. Taxes are to be paid in order that the authorities can work for our good. Of course, the tax burden needs to be shared fairly across the population and it is very much the case that the tax burden is very unfairly shared in the UK. But none of this alters the fact that taxes in principle are to be welcomed for the benefit of all, as required by God.

    Fairness is an important principle in the levying of tax. One consequence of our corrupt attitude to tax is that government resorts to hidden taxes so that we cannot easily see how tax is being raised. So, the tax-free allowance has been frozen for the next several years by the present Conservative government and this will not be changed if the Labour Party were to be elected in July. It means there will be a significant increase in tax raised over the next few years, but those paying more tax will be those currently earning less than £125,140 a year. Everybody above that will not be paying any more tax! Similarly, proposals by the present Tory government to abolish inheritance tax (estate duty) only benefits those wealthy enough to have more than half-a-million pounds to pass on, those that don’t wouldn’t pay inheritance tax anyway.  Once again, the wealthiest carry less of the tax burden.  

    If we were able to have open and dispassionate debates about tax and spending we could see much better how the tax burden was being shared across society. But as it is, the Tory Party seek only to relieve the very wealthy of their obligations to the rest of society – and to do so in a way that the rest don’t notice it – and the Labour Party is too scared to address the issue openly.

  • When Is A Tax-Cut Not A Tax-Cut

    mayberetiredpastor

    When Is A Tax-Cut Not A Tax-Cut?

    But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ …

    Ephesians 4:15

    When is a tax-cut not a tax-cut? When it’s a Tory one! We are in the throes of general election hype and spin. The Conservative Party has announced that if voted back into government the state pension will never be taxed even if it increases above the current tax-free threshold of around £12,500. They are presenting this as a tax-cut, which it isn’t because the state pension does not currently exceed the tax-free threshold and won’t for a good few years to come, so nobody’s actually paying any tax on their state pensions! Setting that aside, in itself it’s not a bad idea and certainly worth considering. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount  I received in state pension (currently around £800 a month) but it wouldn’t be easy to survive on it if it were all the income you had as a pensioner. So, to have the assurance that it will never be taxed would reassure those who do rely wholly or mostly on it.  But it isn’t a tax-cut.

    Which brings me to Rachel Reeves and Labour. On Sunday, she ruled out any increases in income tax or National Insurance if she were to be Chancellor in the next government. Instead, she reassures “us” (which “us” would that be I wonder?) that Labour is the natural party for business and will “grow the economy” in order to raise funds for the spending plans of a future Labour government. Nonetheless, she concedes that she would have “difficult decisions” to make on spending! Meanwhile, Keir Starmer has pledged to hit the 18 week waiting time target for NHS consultations within five years of assuming power. So, I wonder how is Labour going to do that – closing all the prisons and releasing all prisoners into the community perhaps, maybe this is the “difficult” spending decision Rachel Reeves will make? It would certainly save a lot of money which could be diverted to the NHS!

    Our political culture is one in which the major protagonists refuse to be honest. We cannot have an honest debate on tax and spending, instead of setting out the alternatives and the costs and consequences of the various alternatives we are fed sound bites intended to lull or deceive into acceptance. Why can Rachel Reeves not say I have to raise £x billions to ensure that we can hit the 18 week NHS consultation targets which may mean raising taxes by  x%, but if the economy grows by a  certain amount it may be less? Why do the Tories have to dress-up a proposal worth considering as a “tax-cut” when it is nothing of the sort? The Bible teaches us to “speak the truth in love” but as a society we seem incapable of doing this. Unfortunately, this simply opens the doors to Satan, the father of lies as Jesus famously described him, with the terrible consequences that we see and hear about all too frequently.

  • I Don’t Do Gift Aid Anymore

    mayberetiredpastor

    I Don’t Do Gift Aid Anymore

     This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honour, then honour.

    Romans 13:6-7

    We are in the fortunate position of being able to make donations to various charities. Of course, we give to our church and have always Gift Aided it, but we also try to support other causes. Lately, I have ceased ticking the Gift Aid box on the donation forms. Gift Aid is an option to include the tax that you would have paid on the donation so that instead of going to the government it goes to the charity. It occurred to me that the more we Gift Aided, the less of our taxes would be retained by the government and, hence, less would be available to fund public services. At a time when all our public services are financially compromised the government needs all the taxes it can get to keep them going! So, I have stopped adding Gift Aid to our donations.

    We need a different national conversation around tax. Our major political parties are locked into a “reduce taxes at all costs” paradigm. As a result, we see our public services crumbling and the government constantly finding new ways to increase tax revenue without appearing to do so. Consequently, our tax system is unfair, unbalanced, and inadequate. And it is opaque in the extreme! Certain sections of the media will stridently trumpet the historically high rates of taxation we are experiencing but (with the exception of one or two bodies) fail to point out that our taxation is no heavier than the average of similar European countries even at these historically high rates. The only winners of our tax system are the extremely wealthy.

    Our politicians treat us as children believing that we cannot hold an intelligent and mature conversation about the cost of public services and the amount of tax that needs to be raised in order to have good public services. They believe that we can be fobbed-off with constant reductions in general taxation and not make the connection with failing public services. Taxes have to rise and the extremely wealthy have to pay more in taxes.  This has to be done openly and transparently (i.e. income tax) and not through Faustian mechanisms designed to obfuscate and deceive. Of course, restoring public services and improving public services after years of deliberate financial starvation in order to fund tax-cuts cannot be done overnight. The Junior Doctors’ dispute is testament to that – restoring a 35% cumulative loss in pay is not feasible overnight but the present government, dogmatically wedded to reducing taxes, cannot provide a long term path to restoration that  might resolve the dispute.  But will the Labour Party, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves in particular, be bold enough to grasp the nettle and start to talk honestly about taxation and the cost of restoring public services? So far, the signs are not encouraging.

  • Government in Waiting

    mayberetiredpastor

    Government in Waiting

    So is the Labour Party a true government-in-waiting? Does the Labour Party have the answers to revive public services and restore the economy?  A couple of weeks ago I watched Rachel Reeves (the Shadow Chancellor) give the latest party political broadcast for the Labour Party. I don’t usually watch party political broadcasts but I was hoping to hear a radical new approach to public finances that would establish a sustainable framework for restoring and improving public services and provide a basis for a growing economy; so, I watched hers.

    Over the years, Keir Starmer, the leader, has not given any great indication of a fresh approach to the economy. But, perhaps, that’s because he’s more concerned with the politics and hasn’t wanted to give too much of the game plan away. But, surely, Rachel Reeves, as the Shadow Chancellor, in a general election year, would want to set down some very clear markers indicating how she would be transforming the economy. But as I listened, my rather low expectations became even lower.

    What did she talk about? She essentially talked about two things: She talked about Tory tax rises – clearly implying that tax rises were bad;  and she talked a lot about “growing the economy”. Oh, and she also talked about an “iron discipline” in regard to public finances – which is probably code for cuts in government spending! It all sounds depressingly familiar. It appears that Rachel Reeves’ and the Labour Party’s approach to the economy is no different from the Conservative Party’s approach. Rather than a government-in-waiting it seems that we should more accurately speak of the Labour Party as the Conservative Party-in-waiting!

  • The Emperor Has No Clothes On!

    mayberetiredpastor

    The Emperor Has No Clothes On!

    For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing.

    Romans 13:6

    We are in election season and the recent by-elections appear to be good news for the Labour Party. The Conservative (Tory) Party is, arguably, the most successful political party in the world in the modern era, which, when you come to think about it, is surprising! How is it that so many people have had the wool pulled over their eyes for so long?  The Tory boast is that they are the party of economic competence and it is the stick with which they regularly beat the heads of the Labour Party, and people are convinced. How do they do that? It seems to me that it is a very modern example of the Emperor has no clothes on!

    The fundamental dogma of the Tories is that taxes should always be reduced, nothing else is as important as this. Never has this been more clearly demonstrated than in the debacle of Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership. But it continues to be demonstrated in the present Chancellor’s teasing of tax-cuts, all-be-it far less dramatic, for the coming election. The cutting of taxes is the be-all-and-end-all of Tory economic policy.  But if you only, and continually, cut taxes then where is the money coming from to pay for schools, hospitals, roads, railways etc.? The Tories appear to have three answers to this: first, grow the economy; and then, in the meantime, spend less  and  borrow more – borrowing is at its highest since World War 2. It is an inevitable consequence of the latter two that public services will, in the end, deteriorate as less and less money (in real terms) is made available to public services and more and more money is needed to pay the interest on loans. The first is interesting in that it is essentially a religious response, a prayer to the god of economics! And who knows how that will work!? So, we see huge waiting times across the NHS; literally crumbling infrastructure in our schools; increasing backlogs in the courts, fewer and fewer lawyers willing to do legal aid work; not enough housing for the population; social care that is all but non-existent, an antiquated public transport system, armed forces not fit for purpose, more and more people turning to food banks – the list goes on!

    Economic competence is about ensuring that all the services required to maintain a healthy modern social order are present and work well. This is exactly what the Tories have failed to do and this is not an accident but the inevitable consequence of a fundamental dogma that taxes must only be reduced, never increased. The Tories appear to have convinced the British public that they are competent by reducing their headline taxes. But they have failed to ensure effective public services in every area of life. The Emperor really has no clothes on!  

    Does this mean that the Labour Party has it all figured out? Watch this space ….!