If Labour came into power

Don't know but I was astounded at a tweet from a local Tory MP about my city being a dump for having a large ethnic presence.
🗣Legitimate question: can that not get through fired from your job? Even if it isn't illegal, it could be considered hate speech and definitely racist (I know it's not uncommon for Tories to think like that), but it was horrendous.

I think you are right, I shall stop.

Don’t engage with it

For the first time in my lifetime one party has majority support of the general public and it isn't the Tories.

Are all the opinion polls somehow wrong?

No because all they’d do as every incoming party do is blame the last one

I just don’t understand how they will fund things

I would love to know.

This is my problem with Labour - I have literally no idea what they are proposing, their views, and their priorities.

As a family enterprise with well-paid employees, we share your vision, but it gets more difficult when the driving, energising centre reaches retirement age. One of the saddest facts in UK small/medium business life is that under 30% of small businesses continue once the founder retires or dies. As small businesses employ a huge number of staff, even if only one or two apiece, each loss or closure leaves a hole.

I'm not sure any country is in a position to really change the basis of it's capitalism. It would have to be completely cut off from the worldwide economy. I'm also not convinced that home ownership is capable of being the basis of stable wealth in the end.

An ideal world would see a distributed economy IMO, with lots of small business owners, co-op ventures, some employees but paid well with good benefits, localized industries, and very little in the way of large sized corporate bodies or multi-national companies - and those would be managed rather differently. But it would also be an economy with slow growth, slower innovation, and nothing like the amount of consumer goods we are now used to.

No one is going to accept that. The rich won't because that's the end of being rich. And the middle won't because they will have to give up their stuff. And the poor the hope of stuff.

Gosh, @Fifteentoes, your final paragraph took me by surprise! I'm so inured to MN political thinkers' mindless assumption that all business people are fundamentally evil and willing to flog their reluctant employees to extract the last cent of profit from their bleeding hands, that your acceptance that wealth might be a legitimate reward for personal endeavour and hard work has me all shook up.

You are quite right though, I'm not going to make any declarations of assets here !

From a more general philosophical point of view, I'm all for the capitalist argument for wealth as reward for personal endeavour and hard work. I just wish the UK were more honestly and consistently structured that way.

One of the most perplexing failures of the left in this country (and I include Corbyn and McDonnell in this) has been its failure to fundamentally challenge how people think about wealth, income and tax.

We all argue about whether the top rate of income tax should stay at 45%, go back down to 40% or go up to 50%. Which is does will make some difference to what the next government can afford to do, sure. But it won't make any serious structural difference to anything. The entrenched inequality and the barriers to a decent life for many are written into the economy's DNA long before anyone calculates their tax return. We live in a country where less than 1% of the population own over half of its land FFS, and its not because they all worked their way up from the factory floor. We have a government dominated by the Eton-educated, actively lobbied by the royal family. We have a media industry and a police force that both routinely fail in their duty to operate at arms length from political power and hold it to account. We have a trade union movement weakened by decades of attack by governments and media that can't protect workers' rights from unscrupulous employers, and insufficient social housing to counterbalance the perversion of the housing market by extreme inequality of land ownership (see above).

What is a fact is that inequality has measurably increased; that much of the country is effectively locked out of security of home ownership, whether social or private; that capital is more globally mobile now and it's easier for those at the other end of the scale to amass fortunes far beyond the reasonable parameters of any vaguely meritocratic society, while witholding more of those fortunes from tax. I'm no more of an expert than anyone here on how these factors have come about, much less how to fix them. But it starts as a question of will and intention. The Conservative party exists to protect and increase the prosperity of the rich while convincing enough of the poor to vote against their own interests, and tolerate falling living standards, to compensate for the fact that the rich are a minority. That is its intention, which is why that's the exact result we have from a decade of Conservative government.

Or it could just be a coincidence of course.

DH and I have worked our backsides to the bone for 40 years, and built a small business that provides a good family income/wage for our staff; they earn c £45k, which is a lot in our touristic area. So, given that we would like to shuffle off into retirement, how should we do so? I spend hours and hours on MN being given heaps of shit for having a successful business. The assumption is always that we have abused our employees to succeed. The truth is that unless they are doing well, they would go elsewhere to work for more money and better conditions, but no one has left in 15+ years, so we must have got some of it right.

So please, where do we fit into your taxation programme? I am ready for your answers: are we abusive capitalists? or just sensible people trying to provide for a comfortable old age? And at which point do you think it is fair to tax our income?

I do agree on the tax-paying. DH and I are crystallizing 45 years of work this week, and while we just thought we were earning sensible amounts for our age, the risks we've taken commercially (some of which meant forgoing one salary for almost two years) look as if they may have paid off. But it's not inherited wealth, and while we are a bit starry-eyed right now, it's not close to the earnings of a successful 35-year-old investment banker. Happy to pay some tax but we'd like to keep the seven people on our payroll (and their families) feeling as if we have behaved well, fair and square, while we walk into the sunset. But having played it fair and square with tax and paying our staff well, I really don't want to get stung for a sizeable chunk of the proceeds of very long days, ruined weekends and missed holidays once it's totted up. So I am in favour of a wealth tax, but imposed at a level that lets a successful small business create a pot for a comfortable retirement.

Agree @Franklin12 I want a politically party brave enough to argue for reform. An actual reform not just a “policy”. Far more intergrated with social care.

You are right on the funding point. The problem also is everyone thinks someone else should and could pay, “tax Amazon/wealth tax etc” are common suggestions.

The wealth tax is a prime example. My DH and I earn well. Higher rate tax payers. We both come from really humble background. We work full time to afford our house etc. Have very little assets. We would probably say a wealth tax is fair. Our friends who have had financial help with deposits/large inheritances/grandparent help with school fees and often have one SAHP would say it was outrageous/they can’t just pay it as it’s all tied up and we should tax higher rate taxpayers more.

I just wish there was a party which would stop throwing money at the NHS with no hope of anything changing very much. It's not fit for purpose and we need to look at a Europeon Style model.

People want it properly funded. They just dont want to pay it themselves! Its for others to do it.

Interesting article in tomorrow's Spectator about the real size of NHS waiting lists, and the projections. The April tax hike ain't going to touch the sides....