UK Election

 A dignified end on July 4 matters.

Silly chatter about income tax cuts that nobody should expect, fantastical promises about national service, tax exemptions for the elderly paid for by the young, a sudden galumphing into the complexities of higher education policy with wild talk about axing "Mickey Mouse" degrees - this has been a week of posturing and tummy-tickling that pleases some, infuriates others, but for the great majority just come across as unserious. Is that the sort of send-off a grown-up prime minister wants from his time in politics?..

Promises
George Frederick Watts (1817-1904)
Photo Credit: Walker Art Gallery [CC  BY-NC]

Voters aren't jackdaws. They can smell counterfeit. When you don't trust the speaker you disregard the offered goodies. After the mess of Theresa May, the disgrace of Boris Johnson and the lunacy of Liz Truss, respect has gone.

Paradoxically, respect may only be recoverable by telling the electorate not what it wants to hear but what it doesn't: that for many years there can be no thought of cutting taxes; that much has been done for the elderly and it's the youth that need help, that if we want better social care we're going to have to pay for it, that spending more on defence must mean less in other areas; that the NHS cannot expect huge, regular bungs and needs reforms that include some of its customers in its sources of income; that green industries and vital climate change goals will cost us, not pay us, for a while; that fellow citizens are gaming the system with mental health issues; that if Rachel Reeves's [Shadow Chancellor] "securonomics" means the British can relax, then a dash of insecurity may be what the nation needs... Millions know these things to be true...

(Matthew Parris, The Times, 2024)

Promises, Promises, Promises. Why are both main political parties proclaiming they will not increase taxation or that they will cut taxes when they are able to when health, education and local council services are in such a parlous state? Compared with the rest of Europe the UK pays less tax. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies UK tax revenue was 33.5% of gross domestic product  in 2021 [latest figures] compared with the average tax revenue for the western European countries being 39.9%. Surely taxes must increase in the UK if public services are not to get any worse than they are now.