Gordon Brown’s taunt at PMQ last week that Cameron’s tax plans were “dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton” drew blood for Labour for the first time for months. Cameron’s response that the comments were ‘petty’ and ‘spiteful’ shows they really struck home and hurt. The Prime Minister should do more of it. There’s certainly an entirely warranted target. All but two of the Tory shadow cabinet are millionaires and most were educated at elite private schools. Ashcroft, who is the Tory Party deputy chairman, has a seat in the Lords and is trying to swing the election by pouring millions of pounds into Labour marginal seats, may not even pay tax in the UK as a non-dom. Zac Goldsmith, who inherited a huge fortune from his father and is now old Etonian Tory parliamentary candidate in London, admits he is non-domiciled for tax purposes and so pays no tax in the UK for his extensive properties held offshore. The MPs’ expenses scandal has lifted the veil on just some of the accoutrements of the modern Tory, including moats and duck-houses. These revelations are only the tip of the iceberg, and the larger picture would certainly merit investigation.

The reason this analysis deserves to be pursued is that class and wealth has now become a central aspect of the current British power structure to a greater degree than for any time in the last hundred years, more so even than during the Thatcher era, and Tory bankers, politicians, tycoons, and industrialists are heavily into creaming off the proceeds. Tory lobbying for tax cuts is hugely skewed to benefit the hyper-rich. George Osborne’s one openly declared tax aspiration, raising the threshold for inheritance tax to £1m, benefits only the 0.02% richest families. The City of London tax loophole, which pitches capital gains tax at less than half the higher standard rate of income tax, gives a huge tax concession to overwhelmingly Tory private equity and hedge fund managers. The beneficiaries of tax evasion, widely estimated to be at a record £25bn a year, are hugely concentrated on the Tory super-rich.
That’s why Wednesday’s PBR is so important, politically even more than economically. The top City bankers, virtually Tory to a man, are the butt of almost universal detestation, not only for their greed and recklessness in unleashing the current financial crisis, but also and perhaps even more for their insouciance, their indifference to the plight of their victims, and their eagerness to return their snouts to the trough as fast as possible without a shred of contrition. Such glaring arrogance presents a perfect target for Labour – for a windfall tax on bonuses, a Tobin tax on financial transactions, a much tougher crackdown on tax evasion, and a supertax (60%) at the very top end of the income scale above £250,000 a year. Altogether that would make a sizeable dent in the budget deficit. Even more important, it would make the Tories’ class privilege a central issue at the coming election.

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