Labour’s position on taxing people’s homes and savings plunged further into chaos last night as Shadow Treasury Minister Dan Carden put out a statement decrying the idea that Labour has backtracked from their wealth tax plans as “false”. This denial came just a day after Labour first u-turned on their wealth tax proposals…
“This is false. Labour is clear that the cost of the crisis should be borne by those with the broadest shoulders. We are following very closely the academic research under way by LSE Inequalities, CAGE Warwick and others on how a UK wealth tax would work.”
From mini-budget day until last night Labour had been at pains to imply it did not want to tax people out of the economic crisis, preferring instead to grow the economy to deal with debt, a surprisingly age-old traditional Tory message that came after Labour’s wealth tax proposals were badly received. Now it seems like not everyone in the Treasury team got the memo, with serious shadow treasury work going into the plans…
After first dodging the question four times on Sunday, then backing the policy on Monday, Labour has now u-turned on the idea of a wealth tax altogether. Yet more classic “forensic” leadership from Starmer…
An email sent out by Labour’s press office this morning – trailing the Shadow Chancellor’s response to Rishi’s mini-budget this afternoon – proclaims Anneliese Dodds will tell the government:
“if it does increase taxes during the recovery, and cuts back on the public services we all rely on, this will damage demand and inhibit our recovery.
“Labour is not calling for tax rises – we are calling for growth.
A very different message from Sir Keir’s interview two days ago with LBC, in which he told listeners, “we are saying to the government look at the idea of a wealth tax”. A month ago, Boris accused Labour of an “agree, criticise, u-turn approach; we’ve now moved onto “dither, decide, double back”…
Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning, Keir Starmer doubled down on Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds’ idea of a ‘wealth tax’ – raiding people’s savings and assets to pay for the Coronavirus spending splurge. Scratch the surface and Sir Keir’s Labour hasn’t moved that far on from Corbynism at all…
What does she have against people with broad shoulders anyway?
