ARE you a “working person?” I thought I was, but now I’m not sure.
Labour seemed to have a few different definitions of the term during the election campaign, and now it seems to be narrowing even further.
We were told – many times – that Labour would not be raising taxes for working people. That seemed clear enough. But then Keir Starmer suggested what he actually meant by working people was “people who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble”.
Clearly this was an extended slip of the tongue, as Rachel Reeves later clarified that “working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes”, who “earn their money through hard work”.
Of course, not everyone who works has to “go out” anywhere, especially these days when hybrid working has become normalised. Indeed not everyone has to work hard for their money either, but Starmer and Reeves aren’t about to start poking their noses into our hours in the office or measuring levels of brow sweat.
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We were, at least, spared repetition of that dreaded phrase “hard-working families”, which serves to obscure the very hard but unpaid work that goes into raising children and also conjures up bizarre images of urchins going up chimneys or into pits to boost the household’s income.
Among those adults who undoubtedly do work pretty hard are self-employed tradesmen and tradeswomen who travel from manual job to manual job by car or van. These working people might be surprised to hear that ahead of the Autumn Budget, Reeves is reportedly considering a hike in fuel duty, and perhaps even a radical pay-per-mile tax on electric vehicles.
By “working people”, maybe the Chancellor and Prime Minister meant people who go out to work, but not in self-driven vehicles. Or maybe they are preparing to admit that their pledge had an invisible asterisk beside it.
Reeves had some gall to feign surprise at the “discovery” of a black hole in the UK’s finances following the rapid audit of public spending she ordered after Labour’s election win last month. The “news” of a £22 billion overspend followed an election campaign in which the SNP and others repeatedly highlighted a massive gap between revenues and funding commitments identified by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Indeed, the figure of £18-£19bn that was floated proved to be a conservative estimate, but this didn’t stop Labour from simply brushing such spoilsport talk aside. Anas Sarwar dismissed “ludicrous claims and attacks” from the SNP as they sounded the alarm about public service cuts, accusing John Swinney of spreading “misinformation and lies” before telling the public: “Read my lips: no austerity under Labour”.
The SNP have asked him to apologise, now the lies and misinformation have turned out to be accurate forecasts and timely warnings. Let’s not hold our breath.
Labour were helped by the fact that the Conservatives were equally unwilling to be honest about the state of the UK’s finances, with Rishi Sunak instead opting to parrot an unconvincing warning about tax rises of £2000 per household under Labour but failing to put forward a credible alternative prospectus.
At the weekend the i newspaper published the findings of a survey that asked voters which taxes should be the focus if hikes are to be made, with two of the top three choices – the additional (highest) rate of income tax, and corporation tax – among the hikes Labour have already explicitly ruled out. The second most supported rise was to tobacco and alcohol duty, with 33% of Labour votes and 49% of Conservatives ones thinking this should be under consideration.
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A hike to inheritance tax was less than half as popular as an increase in income tax for those earning more between £50,000 and £125,000, because perversely most people in Britain would sooner punish those working in senior positions than do anything to inconvenience those being gifted estates worth half-a-million pounds. Better to hammer the “fat cats” than risk upsetting any spoiled brats. Accordingly, it’s perhaps safe to assume the working smoker and drinker will take the hit here.
So let’s get this straight: even if we use Reeves’s broad definition of “working people” rather than Starmer’s bizarrely narrow one, those who won’t pay more tax under Labour may end up being those who go out to work but don’t drive, drink or smoke. Somehow I don’t think “no tax rises for working, non-driving, teetotal non-smokers” would have had quite the same impact during the election campaign. The – ahem – lies and misinformation had more of a vote-winning ring.
It would have been easy for Labour to be straight with us, by simply saying “no increases to tax on work” but acknowledging that working people, like everyone else, would feel some extra financial pain. That they opted to lie – and then to shamefully accuse their opponents of doing so – is the clearest of warnings not to believe them next time.
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