Is there such thing as "Left of Labour"?

Mise

isle of lucy
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7510909.stm

Clegg pledge to make tax 'fairer'

Nick Clegg wants his party to identify £20bn of savings
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has outlined his pledge to cut taxes for low and middle-income people, as part of his proposals to make "Britain fairer".

He said "struggling families" should be paying "much less" tax while "wasteful" government spending should be cut.

Among proposals in a policy document is that the NHS should pay for patients not treated "on time" to go private.

Labour and the Tories are committed to the same spending levels but Mr Clegg says they are not "set in stone".

Mr Clegg said his party was looking to make £20bn savings in government spending in order to cut taxes for lower and average earners and bring down the overall level of tax.

'Tighten belts'

Mr Clegg wants to close "loopholes" in capital gains tax and pension tax relief which he says favours the better off, and raise green taxes to punish "polluters".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the tax system had to become "much fairer" and the government had to "tighten its belt" - for example by slashing the number of MPs by one third, some defence programmes and even some Whitehall departments.


"I don't accept the assumption from Gordon Brown and David Cameron, that the level of public spending at the moment is cast in stone forever."

Later, in a speech launching a document setting out ideas on a wide range of areas, Mr Clegg said his aim was to create "a fair society" and asked: "How can it be fair that the poorest pay the highest portion of their income in tax?"

He said "struggling families" should be paying "much less" tax and his party would replace council tax and get "wasteful government spending under control and look for ways to cut the overall tax burden".

"Every tax cut we propose will put more money in the pockets of struggling families, not millionaires," he said.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne has said Mr Clegg can afford to make such pledges because his party - the third largest at Westminster - is not expected to win power.

But Mr Clegg told the BBC: "We are quite unapologetic about saying that people who have got a lot of money will pay more, people who pollute will pay more through our green taxes and that some government expenditure, waste at the centre.. that will also be where we get the money from."

Safeguard finances

Among other proposals in the document are a "care guarantee" that NHS patients who are not treated on time will be able to go private - funded by the NHS. On education they would change schools funding, axe "pointless targets" and reduce "stressful national test".

The party also says it would use energy companies' "windfall subsidy" from rising fuel costs to reduce people's bills by insulating homes and through "social tariffs" to encourage people to use less.

It also pledges more investment in renewable energy and to axe plans to build more nuclear power stations, scrap the identity card scheme, have 150 fewer MPs and independently audit MPs' expenses.

Mr Clegg said he was taking forward the Lib Dem "tradition" of making the tax system fairer and tax cuts must come from the "bottom up" - which he said differentiated his party from the Conservatives.

Asked about a previous pledge to introduce a 50p tax rate for top earners, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme "we did our sums, as did others, it worked out it didn't raise as much as we initially thought it had - we felt it was better to look at the tax system as a whole".

On Tuesday, Conservative leader David Cameron did not rule out the possibility of tax rises if his party wins power. He told the BBC he hoped it would not happen but government had to do "what is right to safeguard the public finances".

Lib Dems pledging tax cuts... Well I never! It makes sense for them to start positioning themselves against the Tories, since they seem likely to form the next government. Does this mean that there will be no left wing in the UK?
 
You could argue that cutting taxes for the poor is a left wing idea though. I mean the general idea is the poor pay too much taxes in comparison with the more wealthy, so they should pay less thus making the tax system more 'fair'. I mean he wants to get rid of loopholes that 'favour the wealthy' - thats left wing for sure.

The only thing I don't like about the ideas is that NHS paying for private thing, but I suppose I can't have it all my way.
 
You could argue that cutting taxes for the poor is a left wing idea though. I mean the general idea is the poor pay too much taxes in comparison with the more wealthy, so they should pay less thus making the tax system more 'fair'. I mean he wants to get rid of loopholes that 'favour the wealthy' - thats left wing for sure.

Yeah, I can buy that. The problem is, when you couple it with this...

The only thing I don't like about the ideas is that NHS paying for private thing, but I suppose I can't have it all my way.

...it colours the whole thing a little differently to me.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this will be the first of many gestures that will target Tory voters. Yes, I know they want to reduce taxes for the poor, but the point is they're setting themselves up as the party of tax cuts, at a time when Labour and the Tories are both planning tax rises (even though the Tories won't admit it out loud...). They're planning to "slash waste" in the government, at a time when Labour and Tories parties are talking about increasing spending.

This concerns me..... :ack:
 
You could argue that cutting taxes for the poor is a left wing idea though. I mean the general idea is the poor pay too much taxes in comparison with the more wealthy, so they should pay less thus making the tax system more 'fair'. I mean he wants to get rid of loopholes that 'favour the wealthy' - thats left wing for sure.

The only thing I don't like about the ideas is that NHS paying for private thing, but I suppose I can't have it all my way.

I agree that making the tax system more progressive from the bottom-up would be a great idea
esp. if it's coupled with tough action against the many tax avoidance schemes which only favour
the wealthy. And, of course the idea of using public taxes to fund private healthcare, even as
an attempt to guarantee patient care, is a step backwards. But both ideas are a lot more
left-wing than anything attempted by this so-called "Labour" govt. to date.;)
 
Well Britain does use a surprisingly large amount of it's GDP in goverment, especially for an anglo-saxon economy. 45% or so. Which is about 5% more then the OECD average and 1% more then Germany.
 
Now that's not fair at all...

Of course it's fair. You might be a LibDem supporter (I believe) but I'm speaking as an ex-Labour Party member of long-standing who resigned in despair when I realised how far Blair had hoodwinked the British working class.
The fact that I now vote LibDem now is mostly an accident of geography and an attempt to keep the Tories out at all cost.:)
 
Seeing as Labour is quite centre, yes.
 
Of course it's fair. You might be a LibDem supporter (I believe) but I'm speaking as an ex-Labour Party member of long-standing who resigned in despair when I realised how far Blair had hoodwinked the British working class.
The fact that I now vote LibDem now is mostly an accident of geography and an attempt to keep the Tories out at all cost.:)

What I meant was, those proposals aren't any more left wing than anything Labour has done since 1997.

Here's some graphs of NHS spending, the first two focusing on 1997-2006, and the third giving a longer timeline, focusing on Labour's future spending plans:

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Here's a graph of overall spending:

_44156122_tot_gov_spend_416gr.gif


I don't have a graph for education spending, but when Gordon Brown was Chancellor, he said that Education spending would increase by 2.5% per year between 2007/08 and 2011/12.


I contend that not only are all of these things more left wing than the Lib Dem policies mentioned above, but that they are left wing.
 
Well, your just looking at the economics of things so far, we all know that on the Civil Liberties side of things that the Lib Dems are a million miles for left-wing than Labour.
 
Well Britain does use a surprisingly large amount of it's GDP in goverment, especially for an anglo-saxon economy. 45% or so. Which is about 5% more then the OECD average and 1% more then Germany.

Do have to factor in health care. Countries with compulsory health insurance can in effect bury c. 5% gdp as not being gov spending, just money the gov requires you to spend.
 
Well, your just looking at the economics of things so far, we all know that on the Civil Liberties side of things that the Lib Dems are a million miles for left-wing than Labour.
Yeah, that's true. Labour have this vile authoritarian streak, that I thought would go away when Blunkett left, and then when Blair left. And I don't doubt that the Lib Dems will continue to live up to their name.

But the thing I'm worried about is the economics of things. I mean, they are basically a coalition of Liberals and Social Democrats, and I think that right now they are being more Liberal than SD. I also think that the right wing / small gov't side of the party is being emphasised, because they (quite rightly, given recent elections) see the Tories as their biggest threat now, and they want to position themselves as an alternative to them, rather than to Labour. And I think that this will only worsen (or strengthen, depending on who you ask) as the election draws near.


EDIT: Oh, and, remember the Orange Book? Nick Clegg, Vince Cable (shadow Chancellor), Ed Davey (Foreign Affairs spokesman) and Chris Huhne (Home Affairs spokesman) all contributed. Now, there was a lot of stuff in that that I agreed with. But there was also some stuff that I disagreed with.

Either way, whether you agree with the book or not, it would be tragic if the UK were left with no left wing in Parliament.
 
There is, of course, a left-wing group of MPs in Parliament which take the Labour whip, the Campaign Group (30 or so members) plus George Galloway for Respect. But on their own, they have little influence on the Labour govt.. Maybe with some form of PR that could change.

BTW When I said Cleggs proposals were more left-wing than Labour I only meant a more progressive tax system. Nothing else. And even that would have little meaning without the closing of the massive tax avoidance loopholes for the rich.;)
 
Lib Dems pledging tax cuts... Well I never! It makes sense for them to start positioning themselves against the Tories, since they seem likely to form the next government. Does this mean that there will be no left wing in the UK?

Not a bad thing really.
 
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