What stops you voting Labour? #2

[SleepingRedSnowBootsAndThePea]

Just tried to post on that thread but it had run to 1k responses already, so here is a continuation one and my answer to the OP's question.

Rachel Reeves in her recent Mumsnet interview made it clear that she's not interested in dealing with the anomalies and unfairnesses in the tax system. One example given and that she was asked about in that interview was the way single parent households/ single income households lose child benefit at half of the household income. But there are many, many more such issues creating disincentives to work across the economy.

The role of Chancellor, if the country is to improve in terms of services or living standards, is more important than that of Prime Minister. And I found her response on this critical issue very poor.

Her day one job in role should be to address the things that she can fix immediately, that ARE within her power to sort out with immediate effect. Most economic reforms will take far longer to bear fruit but the tax system, as Chancellor, she would be able to sort out, if she had the will. Yet she made it clear that she has no intention to do so.

Bizarrely for someone who I had high hopes for as a potential Chancellor - as someone who for a change does actually understand economics - she appeared to be unwilling to accept or engage with, let alone address, the massively damaging effect our tax system has on families but also on productivity, at all levels of earnings. And particularly on single mothers and childhood poverty, given that most one parent households (over 90%) are headed by women, and much of child poverty is in those households. And yet she's quite happy for them to be taxed more than other households with the same income, and have child benefit withdrawn at half the income, etc.

So, despite her protestations about wanting to address productivity - which is the only way our economy can grow so that living standards rise and public services can be funded properly - I don't believe she's serious about doing it. Even if there are big infrastructure products and jobs in green energy etc as Labour claim there would be, if the tax system isn't fixed, it won't fix the problem.

The tax system needs fixing at every level of earnings:

amp.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/13/full-time-part-time-work-no-longer-pays-uk-economy

I am hugely disappointed in her response to even the partial question on this that Mumsnet asked her in that interview in relation to child benefit. And they didn't even bother to ask her about the wider question about how she should obviously remove the disincentives at every level of the tax system: double the tax-free allowance for single people, double all the tax/ benefit thresholds for them, get rid of the absurd tax rate of 60%+ at £100k. Remove the bottlenecks that stop, at various earning thresholds, it being worthwhile for many households of any composition to work more or seek promotions etc.

The way she responded shows me she's not willing to make rational, evidence based, fair policy and is instead - depressingly - yet another politician who will pander to optics instead of doing what works and what needs to be done, for everyone.

So I can't vote for them unless their policies on this change.

Hi @SleepingRedSnowBootsAndThePea, thanks for raising this - we'll definitely take a look at the child benefit issue and the general point on how single parent households are taxed.

Theresa May was PM at the time. 🤷‍♀️

The fight for women to gain financial independence was long and hard, tying women’s income to their partner’s in that way would be a hugely retrograde step. One of the reasons financially independent women avoid marriage is to avoid giving up that independence.

I won’t vote for a party so thick and incompetent, they think a man can have a cervix.

Who would you vote for? Don't you think that situation is at least partially due to the current government?

Like a PP, I'm more and more convinced that I'll vote labour. Yes, they have their faults but those are nothing compared to the tories' and what they've done to this country while they've been in power.

Yawn.
I won't vote for a party (Conservatives) that are that thick and incompetent they think the public doesn't care how corrupt and inept they are.
And that saying they respect women despite evidence to the contrary makes them suddenly electable.

A lot of things prevent me from voting Labour but the main thing is the memory of the permanent damage they caused to the country and our democracy the last time they were in power, eg:
Bringing in university tuition fees
Scrapping double jeopardy
Tax the poor, help the rich
9/11 being "a good day to bury bad news"
Spin and appearances being more important than facts
The failures that allowed the 7/7 bombings to happen
Wrecking the country's finances so that we'd spend 15 years and counting with wage stagnation

The only good thing I can think of that Labour did was invade Iraq, literally everything else was bad.

@Dotjones so the 15 years stagnation is nothing to do with the tories ?
What's your opinion on the tories taxing the poor, supporting the rich ? Giving bungs to their cronies ? Deceit, lying, blatant corruption...general mismanagement ?
Brexshit ? Immigration ? Or is that all Labour's fault ?

The fact that they were calling for longer harder lockdowns Will never vote for them again and im a lifelong Labour voter........or rather i was.

@Dotjones Not convinced that invading Iraq was Tony Blair's best decision! In fact, it may have been the worst of all. So many of our current intransigent problems, including mass migration, refugees and asylum seekers, were caused or exacerbated by the destabilisation of the Middle East. The 20th anniversary of the invasion is today so there's been a fair amount of discussion on R4 this morning.

@Dotjones I was also about to add - was your comment on the invasion of Iraq being good sarcasm??

It was a highly unethical war which if waged against a white population would have had Blair and bush charged with war crimes and hauled in front of the ICC.

It destabilised the entire Middle East and created a power vacuum that has worsened life for so many in that region and contributed to extremists groups gaining power.

Not to even start talking of the hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers that died.

I've no doubt that information gatherers from all parties hang out here and some may even start threads like yours OP.

We have a year before the next GE. A lot can happen in a year, especially in the 2020s.🫣 I think opposition parties will be playing it quite vague in order to get feedback before publishing manifestos.

Theresa May was PM in 2017 when she announced the Tory policy of Self ID. Since then genderwoo has been written into government policies, including a Maternity Bill, men have been put in women's prisons and on our wards. Education has particularly suffered from 6 years of TWAW ministers at the helm.

Angela Raynor was enough to stop me voting labour, before I encountered Rachel Reeves.

Yes. How anyone could put either of those two in the roles they currently have and expect to retain any credibility beggars belief.

As @Blossomtoes has pointed out, the fight for women to gain financial independence was long and hard. For years, the tax system linked a woman’s income to their partner’s and taxation was on a household basis. All political parties, and dozens of feminist campaigning organisations wanted independent taxation, and it was finally introduced in 1990. Initially, there was a Married Couples Allowance and an Additional Personal Allowance (that allowed single parents to be taxed in a similar way to married couples) but the value of these was reduced 3 times in the nineties and both were abolished in 2000.

@SleepingRedSnowBootsAndThePea 's statement that single parent households are "taxed MORE than two parent households with the same income, and have child benefit etc withdrawn at half the household income." is only true if, in the two parent household, both parents work.

Going away from the independent taxation principle, the conservatives reintroduced a Transferable Marriage Allowance in 2015 that allowed £1000 (now £1260) of personal tax allowance to be transferred between spouses or civil partners as long as neither is a higher rate taxpayer. This is thus worth a maximum of £252/year (less than £5/week) to those where one of a couple earns less than £11,310 and the other less than £50,270. These limits mean it doesn't apply to those earning enough to have their child benefits reduced.

Yes, God forbid that we should have a former Bank of England economist as Chancellor. How bloody awful to have a politician in a job they’re actually qualified for.

Yes, God forbid that we should have a former Bank of England economist as Chancellor. How bloody awful to have a politician in a job they’re actually qualified for.

Yet so woefully incompetent.

We don’t know yet, she hasn’t had a crack at the job yet. She’s looking a damn sight more competent than Hunt right now. And please don’t tell me you think she’d be worse than Kwarteng. 😂

Just in case any party is listening, I would like Women to have a select committee of our own instead of being part of Women and Equalities.

Cannot vote for a party that won’t commit to protect single sex spaces and are ready to ignore women. Also, their fiscal policies don’t sound any better than the Tories. They have zero policies to curb illegal immigration, sky rocketing rents and affordable housing. Nothing to fix the NHS and nothing to fix public transport. Starmer will talk about whatever the pollsters tell him to, he has no direction, no conviction and no policy. I am politically homeless, but Labour is not the solution.

I'll be voting Labour. Last time I was "anyone but Corbyn". Much as I despise Raynor I don't think she's bad enough for me to vote Tory this time.
There are always anomalies around cut offs and boundaries, impossible to iron them all out.
I think I detect movement on self ID. Starmer has twigged that it's not a vote winner.

Hi @SleepingRedSnowBootsAndThePea, thanks for raising this - we'll definitely take a look at the child benefit issue and the general point on how single parent households are taxed.

Thank you @RhiannonEMumsnet , that is excellent news. It's exactly the type issue that Mumsnet should be campaigning on, and unlike most economic/ social/ discrimination issues, a very simple and instant to fix - a simple amendment to the tax code.

It affects single mothers at every level of the tax system: half of the tax free allowance of a couple, higher rate tax applied at half of the income level, child benefit and nursery funding and tax free childcare and the personal allowance withdrawn at half of the income level. It's no surprise that a large proportion of child poverty is in single parent households with them being taxed much more on the same income. And it's a matter of basic fairness, to be able to expect a level playing field financially when you're already at a disasvantage trying to do the roles of two parents in half the time: being taxed more on top is grossly unfair, especially when single parents will have higher childcare costs than a couple as well! It's also a huge contributor to disadvantaging women at work or resulting in them giving up on their career paths entirely as it ends up just not being worth it when you're paying more childcare AND tax than other households with the same earnings.

I really hope that Mumsnet will take this up and fight for fair taxation for us. It's a massively sexist setup given the extremely high proportion of single parents who are women. This us how many other comparable countries levy taxes so it's not difficult to do. Really hope we'll here more on this and see you launching a campaign to get it fixed.

The fight for women to gain financial independence was long and hard, tying women’s income to their partner’s in that way would be a hugely retrograde step. One of the reasons financially independent women avoid marriage is to avoid giving up that independence.

I think you've misunderstood. Nobody's talking about women losing financial independence. We're talking about single women not being taxed more than those in two adult households. People in couples would still have separate tax allowances (although I'd support them being able to transfer these between them if they choose to). It's just that the single parent wouldn't get half the allowances of the couple.

I don't see her being any better than Hunt based on her current performance. I do pity her for being so cruelly ridiculed though. This clearly hurts her deeply.

@SleepingRedSnowBootsAndThePea 's statement that single parent households are "taxed MORE than two parent households with the same income, and have child benefit etc withdrawn at half the household income." is only true if, in the two parent household, both parents work.

If one parent doesn't work then the couple will have no childcare expenses, so again will be far, far better off than the single parent.

Going away from the independent taxation principle, the conservatives reintroduced a Transferable Marriage Allowance in 2015 that allowed £1000 (now £1260) of personal tax allowance to be transferred between spouses or civil partners as long as neither is a higher rate taxpayer. This is thus worth a maximum of £252/year (less than £5/week) to those where one of a couple earns less than £11,310 and the other less than £50,270. These limits mean it doesn't apply to those earning enough to have their child benefits reduced.

It doesn't go away from the principle of independent taxation because transferring the tax allowance is completely optional and both parties have to agree to it. I'd support couples being able to transfer any amount of their allowance between them as best fits their circumstances, but on an opt-in basis which either can revoke at any time to return to equal allowances for each person. Provided the single people also started to receive the same level of household allowances that the couple receives. It would be much fairer and is indeed how it works in very many countries, which have far fewer issues with sex equality, and poverty for women and children in single parent households. It's a tried and tested system that is far fairer and has better outcomes.