Michael Meacher MP

It’s not often one agrees with the IOD, but on this occasion they are right (as far as it goes) to say: “It is high time for a clear-out of the leaders who created this mess, and the should be replaced with new blood”.   From the IOD’s point of view no doubt this would be a good example of capitalism’s vaunted ‘creative destruction’ – getting rid of Bob (Greed Personified) Diamond and all the other arrogant and self-interested gamblers who have done so much damage to the public purse and to public confidence.   But it’s not just some rotten apples who should be got rid of, it’s the financial system itself which has irretrievably broken down.   There are several steps that should now urgently be taken. (more…)

If there is one thing that produces boiling anger amongst the general public, it’s that the bankers who’ve brought this country to its knees have walked away unpunished.   Despite criminal negligence, if not outright incompetence and irresponsibility, which has cost millions their jobs, pay cuts and loss of public services, they get off scot-free after plunging the nation into eye-watering debts of hundreds of billions, yet burglars or thieves who purloin a few hundreds or thousands are sent to prison.   The bank bosses of RBS, Lloyds and HBOS were eventually eased out of their jobs, but none was prosecuted.   One rule for the bankers and the rest of the elite who administer the rules in their own interest, and another for the rest of us. (more…)

For some reason the Evening Standard made Blair guest editor yesterday -perhaps only a Russian oligarch-owned paper that attacked Ken Livingstone at every opportunity would offer Blair extensive publicity to broadcast his desire that he wants to re-enter British public life.   Perhaps that indicates that they perceive Blair more as New Tory than New Labour, and for good reason – his lust for mega-money, his obsession with power for its own sake, his readiness to invade Iraq if that’s what the US wanted, his embrace of big business and the ultra-rich by squashing the unions as representatives of working people, his infatuation with markets and privatisation, to name but a few of his most prominent traits – all Tory to the hilt.   But what stands out even more is his blind disregard of how his regime paved the way for Labour’s second biggest defeat in a century. (more…)

Cameron’s latest foray into populism shows signs of desperation.   With IDS’ universal credit the fulcrum of the new welfare system, but now well behind schedule and likely not to be completely rolled out till 2017, Cameron fires off another scatter-gun splurge of anti-welfare pellets, before he or anyone else knows the costs or practicality of the huge upheaval already making its way slowly down the track over the next 5 years.   So why is he pushing so prematurely at a further farrago of disconnected and reckless cuts?   Answering that gives an inkling into how far things have now got out of control at No.10. (more…)

So Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, cheers us up today by telling us that if a quarter of the annual tax receipts foregone through either avoidance, evasion or uncollected debt were actually levied, it could cut income tax by 2p in the £ (i.e. by about £10bn).   It would have been better if he’d said it would then not be necessary for Cameron in his speech today to propose robbing and harassing those who genuinely need benefits for which they have contributed via national insurance contributions and which he has no contractual authority to renege on.   But the real point about Alexander’s throwaway remark is that instead of telling us what might be – he after all is supposed to be in government! – why doesn’t he actually deliver the goal instead of just talking about it?   And it’s not just tax avoidance: it’s top pay in the boardroom which is still heading upwards in the stratosphere and the government just wagging a finger at it. (more…)

No-one forgets that the poll tax was the trigger that brought down Thatcher.   Then a Tory government was pushing its ideology to extremes – a flat-rate tax system, a brutal destruction of manufacturing industry, defenestration of the trade unions, a blindness to community and altruism in favour of selfishness and individualism, a deliberate huge wedge driven into the abyss between rich and poor.   Today there is an uncanny resemblance to that scorched earth policy.   Privatisation is now being pushed to the point of the virtual elimination of the public sector, the banks are let off scot-free while the 99% victims are made to pay the price, the ‘big society’ is used as Rowan Williams has said as a cover for the phasing out of the Welafre State, and the wealth-poverty gap has ballooned.   Yet Cameron last night, kamikaze-like, has aggressively asserted his determination to go further still.   The Tories are like an occupying army laying waste to the foundations which will continue till they are stopped in their tracks.   An explosion is waiting to happen. (more…)

First it was Jimmy Carr, then it was Gary Barlow of Take That (a curiously appropriate name), then Chris Hoy (Olympic cyclist), and now footballers like Wayne Rooney.   The trouble with the media is all they’re interested in is wealth, celebrity and bling.   Tax avoidance on 6 or 7-figure pay deals makes a good story, complete with pictures, gawping and moralising (thank you, Cameron), but that’s missing the real point.   What it’s actually all about is big business multi-national corporations and ultra-rich individuals cheating taxpayers out of £42bn a year (HMRC’s figure) which is then recouped by cutting benefits (£81bn) for those on the lowest incomes plus cutting public spending (£81bn) for those using public services.   What it really amounts to is a gigantic swindle redistributing money on the grand scale from poor to rich. (more…)

Gove and his right-wing Tory allies, such as the Daily Mail, earnestly desire to re-introduce selection , but know that if they did so straightaway in one leap they would court a whirlwind of resistance.   So he’s adopted the next best thing – phasing out GCSE which was designed for Comprehensives and bringing back the Certificate of Secondary Eduacation (CSE) for ‘less intelligent’ children, as was used in the secondary moderns of the 1950s.   The ultimate goal is obvious: the resurrection of the old grammar school/secondary modern divide,   When taken in conjunction with examples like Kent County Council drawing on Gove’s own earlier legislation to expand grammar schools in the county, it seems clear that the Tory fixation of high-achievers at the expense of the rest has now firmly taken hold. (more…)

So Jimmy Carr was out of order in his K2 tax fiddle, he was in Cameron’s phrase ‘morally wrong’ for trying to avoid tax, and now he’s tweeted his apology by saying he made ‘an enormous error of judgement’ (having the previous day said defiantly “I pay what I have to and not a penny more”), Cameron got his man, so that’s all done and dusted then.   Except it isn’t: one celebrity swallow in repentance doesn’t make a summer.   There are 1,100 rich persons cheating taxpayers out of due tax on £168m a year by using K2, plus, it’s now been revealed, another celebrity Gary Barlow of Take That and 1,000 others who also squirrel away another £480m a year in offshore music investment schemes to dodge proper payment of tax.   But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (more…)

Today I am introducing a Private Member’s Bill into the Commons (having won a place in the Private Members’ Bill lottery) which will outlaw any financial transaction for which the primary purpose is tax avoidance/evasion rather than any genuine economic purpose.   It will transfer the burden of proof, from HMRC having to prove that a transaction was really a disguised tax avoidance device, to a company having to prove that it had a genuine purpose.   If HMRC believed for good reasons that it was really for tax avoidance purposes, they could declare that the transaction was null and void and it would be for the company, if they so chose, to challenge that decision in court.   As it happens, on this very day a new tax avoidance sceme has just surfaced which would be a perfect example for the application of my Bill. (more…)

The Experian Public Sector survey released today of families in work but at risk of a slide into destitution is very telling.   There are 7 million adults in this category, in addition to the 5.5 million working-age adults already living in poverty (i.e. less than 60% of the national median income) – a total of nearly a third of the national adult population.   The working adults are already squeezed to the limit, sometimes going without food or any other expenditure for days before the next pay packet comes in.   What the survey documents for the first time is that these families can be tipped over into destitution by one unpredicted event, which could be an unexpectedly large utilities bill or failure of heating because of a boiler breakdown, let alone loss of a job or reduced hours.   This is a situation Britain has not known since the 1930s. (more…)

IDS, fresh from supporting corrupt and ineffective welfare-to-work companies like A4E, chopping DLA and Incapacity Benefit for up to a million disabled persons, extending unpaid mandatory work schemes, and forcing 100,000 families out of their homes through cuts in Housing Benefit – all part of the government’s overall plan to cut benefits by £18bn while the ultra-rich have gained £155bn over the last 3 years but pay little or no tax – is now set to axe strikers’ benefits.   Ever since the 1948 National Assistance Act workers wo take industrial action continue to get Housing Benefit and Working Tax Credits for up to 10 days.   Even though Thatcher never touched these entitlements, IDS is now determined to withdraw them when his universal tax credit comes into operation in October next year.   It won’t stop, for example, doctors on £100,000 a year who are this week taking part in their first strike since 1975 over a dispute on pensions.   But it will hit the lowest-paid public sector workers like teaching assistants, nurses, transport workers, and cleaners. (more…)

Right up to today’s vote relentless pressure has been exerted by the Eurozone leaders (Merkel, German), the IMF (Lagarde, French), the World Bank ( Zoellick, American), and the EU outsiders (Cameron-Osborne) to bully the Greek electorate into accepting draconian, humiliating and ultimately self-defeating conditions for a bailout to remain within the eurozone.   The Greek public have persistently been told that failure to do so would not only be worse for them (however onerous the penalties), but could also lead to the collapse of the euro and (Zoellick yesterday) there could be a “Lehmans moment” producing a global crisis with dire consequences for developing nations.   It is vastly overblown and highly misleading.   The Greeks may well see through this false dilemma and vote for Tsipras’ anti-bailout party, Syriza, which could well then (given the ripple impact across the whole Eurozone) force a determined attempt to restructure the euro which is long overdue. (more…)

It is astounding that some political leaders can be so wilfully blind.   Osborne, faced with a collapsing economy and banks that are unwilling to lend because they have such lack of confidence in the economy that they don’t believe they’ll get their money back, has now in utter desperation bowed to banks’ demands to water down financial regulation even further in exchange for – what?   The Treasury is opening up a new credit facility called (hopefully) ‘funding for lending’, allegedly around £80bn, which is designed to get money flowing to industry and getting the economy to turnaround from its vicious spiral downwards.   But will this work?   There are two fundamental flaws in this latest idea. (more…)

IDS was at it again yesterday.   The Tories really excel at the Big Lie.   First it was Cameron saying the crash was the fault of Labour over-spending, though after 8 years of Labour government the budget deficit was a very low 3% of GDP in 2007 and only hit 11.6% after the banking bailout.   Then Osborne siad the post-crash slump was all the fault of the eurozone, even though the recession in Britain began at least a year before the eurozone troubles began, as though his own massive cuts had nothing to do with it.   Now in his speech yesterday IDS has told us that it wasn’t the bankers who crashed the economy, it was the poor because of the amount spend on tax credits.   Specifically he said: “We wonder why we got in such a problem over debt and deficit and it’s because actually in chasing the poverty targets, more and more had to be spent”.   Just plain silly. (more…)