AIBU to want a party to "take on the rich and powerful"

[BlueJuniper94]

AIBU to want a party to "take on the rich and powerful" but without all the woke stuff? I don't really like that term but you know what I mean. Why doesn't this seem to be an option

Take them on how and to achieve what?

There are no Labour MP billionaires. The closest they came was Lord Sainsbury, who was never an MP, but sat in the HoL, and whose family is estimated to be worth £1.3bn

He placed 92 million Sainsbury shares in Innotech , a startup trust that pays all dividends to charity.

He is known for his charitable donations to various causes (over £1bn so far) including £18.5m to the Labour party, and does not 'hold on to his riches'.

I don't like the term "take on". We already have too much conflict in politics. I'd like to see a more inclusive and cooperative approach. Jeremy Corbyn seems to be doing it for you but it will be a disaster with him taking votes off Labour and letting Farage in.

Brilliant idea! Wheres the money going to come from? When you've solved that one come back for a chat.

They can do this without such a huge wealth divide existing. I think some people have no idea what a billion pounds looks like versus a million. If someone is a multi billionare that's a heck of a lot of money and a small increase in tax could do a lot. Ultimately it is the middle class that pays for a lot of the country's infrastructure through high taxes, whilst large corporations pay smaller proportions. We live in a time where people's taxes are going directly to landlords via housing benefit and not back to the state or propping up poor wage growth via benefits. It does not make sense. I'm not anticapitalism, but it's not working in its current form.

Also, lots of people start businesses everyday. Agree we need large companies with great infrastructure to serve our needs, but we also need small and medium businesses too.

I live on the edge of Bristol and fail to see the country you are describing. I now lead a very small life and look at the situation around me as an outsider and see:
A major city with lots of building projects.
A commercial district of office development has been built in the last 20 years revitalising the area around the station.
A city where a huge area of bars and restaurants has been built in the last 15 years and pop up food vans are on many street corners...and they are busy.
My town has lost 2 pubs and gained 7 in the last 25 years and grown by 10k people.
It's also gained 2 chain hotels, 4 supermarkets.
The docks visible from the M5 is basically a huge car park filled with imported new cars.
House prices are rising year on year.
There are lots of high end cars on the road.
Events like the Bristol harbour festival, balloon fiesta and food festivals are rammed.

There clearly a huge amount of disposable income out there. The stock market where the middle class will have their pensions and ISAs has grown over the last 12 months 10%

I tended to agree with your argument 10 or more years ago. But the tax thresholds have stagnated since 2021/22 and far far more ordinary people are getting caught up in paying the higher tax rates. A £100k plus salary isn’t what is was 10 year ago, for example circa £50k salary takes a worker into the 40% tax bracket today. In 2015 £50k was worth £36k.

So if the threshold continue to stagnate - more or less all lower income families will be dragged into higher tax brackets. Labour have indicated that the thresholds will stay as they are until at least 2028.

Usually starts at 50k when looking to tax us all to death

Yes, and then there's the issue of "taking on"?
Taxing them? Limits to business?
Re-nationalisation?.
I can see that you have clarified some of this, and I agree with your points. The water companies are a good example.

Millions could be put into front line education if these Multi Academy Trusts didn't have large numbers of highly paid managers who aren't in schools.

When the EU proposed rules to stop the "rich & powerful" from hiding their assets offshore, they got together and convinced the country to, narrowly, vote against their own interests and make the whole country poorer.

So basically, it's not going to happen while so much of the country is pig ignorant...

….By which you mean you have no reasonable response, just reform sound bites.

The UK has borders, to say anything else is ridiculous. You disagree with, presumably, immigration polices, but frankly not sure how you link that to “taking on the rich & powerful” who in reality would not be affected by changes to immigration polices. We also need immigration to refresh and renew our workforce.

You say bring back manufacturing, but most British people wouldn’t do that work, it is too physical and not well paid, so who would do it? We have created a society where individualism and capitalism is king, I agree that isnt necessarily optimal for everyone, but people have bought in and you can’t just easily change that.

It also isn’t fair so say money and IP are not real and of value. In some respects it is harder to develop a clever invention than, say, build an item, but the intangibility does not make the former of less value. I also don’t think the equalisation of earnings point you make is valid, why on earth should someone who has chosen to invest in further education, worked 60 hours a week for years, taken risks, innovated etc not be rewarded for that? I agree in a safety net of social security but at a basic level only, work is valuable and important and should be rewarded. Before you jump on me about care workers I don’t believe their work is less important, but it arises from a different servies of circumstances, choices and abilities and you just can’t say it is “worth” the same economically as say a lawyer, doctor, engineer etc.

By all means work on a fairer society, but don’t be naive, simplistic or dog-whistling in your posts.

Edited for typos.

I do think the Labour party has lost its way in that it needs to concentrate on material circumstances rather than seeing economic inequality as just another tranche of victimhood to be shoehorned into the oppressor Vs oppressed, goodies Vs baddies narrative that it's been bent on with moralistic zeal for most of this century. It's even bled into common discourse with people talking nonsense about "economic privilege" instead of using words like "rich".

Even Blair knew that it's all about the money, domestically speaking.

Socialism isn't supposed to be about sanctimonious emoting but about economic structures and god knows the UK has enough bent, suspect, solidly entrenched economic fat pads that would keep an actual socialist party with a mind set to dismantle them busy for several parliamentary lifetimes, without needing to bother itself one iota about hierarchy of identity or culturally mediated models of privilege or any of the rest of it.

I don't know what you're talking about. It sounded as though you believe identity politics will solve economic inequality. I responded on that basis

Agreed. I was with you until you said that.

What will solve economic inequality?

You want them to take on the rich but without all the woke stuff. Woke means 'a state of being aware of social and political injustices', so how can you tackle a social injustice without the awareness of social injustice?

Economic redistribution isn't necessarily about social justice though - it's about money. Nobody needs to make moral judgements about anything.

I've kinda covered this upthread. I believe greater economic equality will solve most, if not all, social injustices. But we now have the added issue of a vocal cohort who have a very warped view of the social injustices we are facing. Placing cross dressing males above the needs of female prisoners or those trying to access support after suffering domestic abuse.

"...I believe greater economic equality will solve most, if not all, social injustices." That's a bit woke, isn't it?

Depends how you define the term. Most people understand "woke" as hyper identitarianism. Those who participate in cancel culture to achieve their aims whole undermining the social solidarity necessary to achieve meaningful change.

I'm not sure I understand

The OP is talking about social injustice which whiffs of bullshit liberalism to me. They're probably a commie.

A Lib and a commie? Sure

@BlueJuniper94

Commies think liberalism is bullshit as well OP and they want to redistribute wealth. You've been very vague about how you want to achieve your aims.