Tagged with Ed Balls

Labour is failing on tax avoidance

Tax free zoneThis week’s YouGov poll for the Sunday Times makes it very clear that Labour is failing to get a clear anti-tax avoidance message across to the public. In answer to the question “In general, do you think it is acceptable or unacceptable to LEGALLY avoid paying tax?”, 62% of people (72% of Labour voters) think it is “unacceptable to legally avoid tax” versus 29% (20% of Labour voters) who think it’s acceptable. And yet only 50% of Labour voters and 21% of all voters think Labour is the party “would do the most to cut down on tax AVOIDANCE?”. 

Whilst it is true that the Government has attempted to talk the talk of tax avoidance, the reality is very far removed from the talk as their squalid deal with Switzerland, which Richard Murphy described perfectly: Continue reading →

Ed Miliband needs to challenge the UKIP surge

At the time of writing (15:47) UKIP has won 78 seats and is averaging 25% of the vote in the wards where it is standing. That is quite something. Not only is it making the Tories look stupid and the Liberal Democrats look irrelevant, it makes Labour look like they haven’t the nous to be an effective opposition.

This is to change. As Rafael Behr has written in his New Statesman column this week politicians have two choices; they can yield or defy. The Labour leader clearly has an eye, at least, to the latter.

Continue reading →

Dear Ed Balls… why Labour should support my anti-tax avoidance proposals

Today MICHAEL MEACHER will push again for a stronger anti-tax avoidance regime. Here, he urges the Labour frontbench to support his proposal.

Dear Ed,

A few months ago I put forward my General Anti-Tax Avoidance Principle Bill (GANTIP) for second reading. As a Private Member’s Bill low in the order it did not make progress, though it did receive sympathetic support from the Front Bench. I am now putting it forward again on the first day of the Finance Bill committee stage tomorrow, and am now asking that you use this opportunity for Labour to give a clear commitment that it will introduce GANTIP as soon as it is elected to office. There are several very strong reasons to do so.

Continue reading →

Don’t be derailed by Progress confrontation

This week, former General Secretary of the CWU Alan Johnson has issued an unabashed attack on trade union influence within the Labour Party in an interview with Progress, part of an increasingly confrontational and destructive approach to dictating Labour Party policy from the Blairite wing. Jacqui Smith’s now regular articles, including hers on Osborne’s welfare trap before the recent benefit cap vote, follow in a similar vein and indicate a growing unrest amongst the Labour right as the next election grows closer and they increasingly try to assert their influence. Continue reading →

When will Labour force a crisis vote on the economy in the Commons?

It seems almost unbelievable that the UK economy is still 3.5% below its level 5 years after the financial crisis began, when the US, Germany, France and almost all other major countries are now well above their pre-recession level, and that the UK economy has now contracted in 4 of the last 5 quarters and is very likely entering an unprecedented triple-dip plus loss of Osborne’s prized triple A credit status, yet all this and the latest -0.3% contraction passes with nothing more than comments from Ed Balls. Continue reading →