I don’t think you can underestimate how damaging it is that they’ve completely failed to provide a vision or purpose.
Some of what you’re suggesting needs doing requires buy in from the public. For example, if you’re going to to touch income tax, you need to have persuaded people of the upside for the country and themselves. But because there is no vision, nothing to get behind, and because they’ve alienated people with ham handed approaches to welfare and the winter fuel allowance people will just react with hostility.
If an income tax rise is announced in November, I’d want my union out on strike immediately to get the money back. For that matter, I’d strike now just to contribute to damaging this government even though I don’t have a huge issue with my pay and conditions as they stand.
If there was a government prepared to be more up front, for example who was prepared to guarantee that an income tax rise would safeguard support for disabled children (just using my priority as an example there) whilst tackling national debt then I might be more inclined to go with it.
Not with this government obviously, because even if Starmer did give a guarantee like that I’d never believe it or give it any time to see what happened because he and Labour have shown what they are.
Anyway - the TLDR - the changes you think are necessary require public buy in and this government will never get it.
They are just trolling the UK public at this point.
But don’t question them cos look what the Tories did…if they served another 10 terms, they would still be blaming the Liz Truss budget and the Tories for their ineptness.
Its the ultimate failure of the political operation under starmer that its gotten to this point. I don’t think there were many people who thought they would stick to their tax promises throughout their term but a tax raising budget isn’t necessarily a death blow.
I don’t think the electorate will buy the spin but these tax increases are the right thing to do, leaks and briefings have indicated its going to be middle classes and upwards primarily affected, which is fair enough as Labour draws majority of their support from there.
A working person is anyone earning less than 46k according to Labour so they’ll be “protected”
No, that has been the biggest failure in the UK - the middle class has been eroded to the point there are now wealthy who don’t feel any of it and the poorer who feel it all. Not disimilar to 3rd World Countries
It depends how how you define it. Middle class in the UK use to be seen middle manager type and upwards with a household income of at least 150k with kids attending grammar school or day attending a boarding school living in a detached house with front and back garden.
In the modern sense, Labour see it as anyone isn’t working poor and doesn’t have savings but we know earning over £45k and having a few savings doesn’t mean you’re well off. You’re walking a tight rope in this day and age
Economically it might be the right thing to do but they don’t have the political capital to do it. They’ve destroyed any public confidence in them and governments that do that don’t get the latitude from their public to make decisions like this.
The next step is surely strikes to undo the gains they might make from a rise in income tax.
It’s an odd one. At least in our country, the notion of “class” seems very muddled, with there being no clear common consensus as to whether this is an economic or social measure.
If you met me, you’d likely put me squarely in the middle class category, and my upbringing was middle class, but if you saw my household income, it’s comparable to two people working full time on a salary close to the minimum wage, because my wife is unable to work due to her health, so we live off a single salary.
So where do I fit into the British class system really?
Then you have the Marxist interpretation of class, which is not about what you earn, but about your relationship to the means of production, ie whether you own capital or sell your labour to those who do. It’s not exactly how I view it, but at least in terms of who we really need to be targeting with tax rises, I do think of class in a bit of a Marxist way: ie it’s not people who sell their labour and get like 80/90/100k a year, it’s the people with real wealth, ie the owners of the means of production. “Tax wealth, not work” as the likes of “Gary’s Economics” would put it.
Labour still seem to be under the impression they’re not an interim government that shouldn’t start implementing major changes they won’t be seeing through as they’ll be out of power in a few years.
I see the usual pre budget rumours have been released to gauge public reaction.
Think the biggest one is the 3p per mile tax on EV’s so far, granted it won’t be until 2028 but think this will hit the EV market hard. I am in favour of it though but not for the money grab reasons that the governent are using it for.
