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Public urge Cameron to come clean about his taxes – and drop his tax cut for millionaires

October 6, 2012 11:56 am

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The public – including most Tory voters – say drop the tax cut for millionaires. And it’s time Cameron to tell us if he is personally benefiting, says Michael Dugher

To say that David Cameron and George Osborne got a few things wrong in their Budget last March would be some understatement. Their infamous ‘omnishambles’ saw u-turns over the pasty tax, the churches tax, the charities tax and the petrol tax. It showed that far from ‘detoxifying’, the Conservative party had still not changed – it was still the same old Tories. And it finally laid to rest the myth of Tory competence.

But the biggest misjudgement in that Budget is something Cameron and Osborne have been determined not to u-turn on – the cut in the 50p top rate of tax for everyone earning over £150,000 a year. A tax cut that benefits just 1% of taxpayers, and is worth a whopping £40,000 every year to 8,000 millionaires.

In these tough times, a tax cut for millionaires is grotesquely unfair. Don’t forget, at the same time that people at the top were getting a tax rebate, millions of already squeezed families and hard-pressed pensioners are having to pay more under this Government. Families with children are losing an average of £511 this year, and the so-called “Granny Tax” means that 4 million pensioners will lose an average of £83 a year.

I remember sitting in the House of Commons listening to the George Osborne’s Budget. Responding to the Chancellor’s statement is just about the toughest thing any Leader of the Opposition has to do. But straight away Ed Miliband challenged Cameron and his ‘cabinet of millionaires’ to put their hands up if they were going to personally benefit from the cut in the 50p top rate of income tax. None of them put their hands up. None of them has come clean since.

Today’s ICM poll shows that the public hasn’t forgotten. By a huge margin – 71% to 17% – people think that the Government should abandon the 50p tax cut. By a margin almost as big – 64% to 22% – people think that David Cameron should make clear whether or not he is benefiting from his own tax cut. The majority in every region, every social class and every age group agree.

Even among people who voted Conservative at the last election, 65% thought the Prime Minister should cancel the top rate tax cut compared to just 26% of Tory voters who thought it should still go ahead. And by a majority of 46% to 40%, Conservative voters also thought Cameron should tell us if he is giving himself a tax cut.

That’s why I’ve written to David Cameron today to ask him to come clean. This isn’t about how rich he is. It’s about the decisions he takes. There did used to be a ‘One Nation’ tradition in parts of the Conservative party – we might not have always agreed with them, but there were people that came from different backgrounds who were trying to do the right thing and govern in the interests of the whole country. But Cameron’s tax cut for millionaires, while millions are paying more, is in a different tradition – one in which the Tory party stands up for a privileged few, rather than for the many.

If David Cameron wants to be a One Nation Prime Minister, he needs to behave like one. Cancelling his millionaire’s tax cut would be a good place to start. In recent years, trust in politics has been at an all time low. Cameron and his cabinet have a chance to finally be straight with the British people and come clean about whether they are personally benefiting from a tax cut that is so obviously unfair. After all, they were the ones who used to tell us that we were “all in this together”.

Michael Dugher is Labour MP for Barnsley East and shadow minister portfolio.

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  • http://twitter.com/RF_McCarthy Roger McCarthy

    As a numbers nerd I am constantly annoyed at the inaccuracy of this £40,000 per millionaire figure.

    A millionaire is generally defined as a person whose assets are worth a million pounds or more – which given house price inflatjon is a term which applies now to well over 1% of the UK population (Barclays Wealth estimated that there were over 619,000 in December 2010 and that this number is rising by about 20,000 per year).

    The only people who would be £40k or more better off from the tax cut would be some0ne who has annual income subject to income tax of £1 million.

    That 8,000 millionaires figure Michael quotes thus presumably represents an estimate of such  taxpayers who are ‘only’ about 1% of the asset millionaires who are 1% of the UK population. 

    So while strictly speaking it is not incorrect it definitely implies that all millionaires will be £40,000 better off while in fact only about 1% of them will be.

    But of these 8,000 (assuming there really are so many members of the super rich who declare £1 million+ income and actually pay taxes on it) most would logically be getting more than £40,000 back.

    And as for David Cameron I can see no evidence that his taxable income is in fact a million a year – he is undoubtedly a multi-millionaire but if his total taxable income is anywhere near a million p.a. he is being radically failed by his accountants.

    We are therefore setting ourselves up for a fail every time we claim that millionaires are getting a £40,000 cheque  from George Osborne and that Cameron is one of those millionaires who will get that cheque.

    Plus living in a family home bought in his wife’s name that cost £1.6m and a bachelor pad in Primrose Hill  (where a 2-bed flat costs half a million) Ed Miliband himself – or pretty much any member of the shadow cabinet who has a family home in Central London can only avoid being an asset-millionaire by very creative accounting. 

    So while I am all in favour of class warfare we really need to be more careful about throwing around  that term ‘millionaire’ – we’re not Doctor Evil just emerged from suspended animation.
     

    • rekrab

      Someone like Jeremy Clarkson, or some football playing star that have earned a few million.Will they be receiving a cheque of some£40,000 for every million they’ve 
      earned? and lets not forget the massive bonuses some bankers get because if it’s paid in shares does that exclude it from taxation?

      • http://twitter.com/RF_McCarthy Roger McCarthy

         To get that £40,000 you basically have to be paid a salary of £1m-plus a year which you haven’t managed to get redefined as payments to a company in a tax haven, pension contributions, share options etc. 

        As the BBC kerfuffle illustrates you have to be either pretty dim or genuinely keen on paying your fair share in tax (which some rich people evidently are) for that to apply if you are in that top 1% of the top 1%.

        And while this might cover some premier league footballers it almost certainly does not apply to Jeremy Clarkson who I believe ‘lives’ in the Isle of Man.

         

        • rekrab

          The hole taxation system seems counter balanced in favour of avoidance. If your in the top bracket and there seems to be no definitive clarification on the numbers, It’s like some J K Rowling novel, where you have to pass through walls in the dark vaults of the treasury to find real answers.Clarkson does receive his pay from the BBC? YES! and millions pay the license here in Britain.Here’s a link that suggest those earning 500,000 to 1 million number around 16,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom what we don’t know is how many actually earn the 1 million bracket but what does stand out is the lower ends pay their share, people on fixed hourly rate incomes pay their share mandatory, while those at the higher end seem to go to all lengths to  avoid tax.Having a culture where tax is a dirty word for some isn’t conducive to creating a fairer society

        • rekrab

          The hole taxation system seems counter balanced in favour of avoidance. If your in the top bracket and there seems to be no definitive clarification on the numbers, It’s like some J K Rowling novel, where you have to pass through walls in the dark vaults of the treasury to find real answers.Clarkson does receive his pay from the BBC? YES! and millions pay the license here in Britain.Here’s a link that suggest those earning 500,000 to 1 million number around 16,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom what we don’t know is how many actually earn the 1 million bracket but what does stand out is the lower ends pay their share, people on fixed hourly rate incomes pay their share mandatory, while those at the higher end seem to go to all lengths to  avoid tax.Having a culture where tax is a dirty word for some isn’t conducive to creating a fairer society

        • rekrab

          The hole taxation system seems counter balanced in favour of avoidance. If your in the top bracket and there seems to be no definitive clarification on the numbers, It’s like some J K Rowling novel, where you have to pass through walls in the dark vaults of the treasury to find real answers.Clarkson does receive his pay from the BBC? YES! and millions pay the license here in Britain.Here’s a link that suggest those earning 500,000 to 1 million number around 16,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom what we don’t know is how many actually earn the 1 million bracket but what does stand out is the lower ends pay their share, people on fixed hourly rate incomes pay their share mandatory, while those at the higher end seem to go to all lengths to  avoid tax.Having a culture where tax is a dirty word for some isn’t conducive to creating a fairer society

          • PeterBarnard

            Derek,

            HMRC estimates (April 2012) for how many people receive how much may be found (Table 2.5) at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/income_tax/menu.htm#liabilities

          • rekrab

            Thank you @Peter Barnard, I found these stats quite interesting from your link. 29.7 million taxpayers in 2012-13, 0.9 million lower than in 2009-10
            • 4.10 million higher rate taxpayers (13.8% of all taxpayers), 0.9 million higher than in 2009-10.
            • average rates of tax fall to 11.4% for basic rate taxpayers in 2012-13 and rise to 27.2% for those liable at higher rates. That tends to cement the happenings that we’re creating more higher rate tax payers, although the avoidance is very much a culture embedded by those at the top.

          • PeterBarnard

            By Golly, Derek, you’ve been busy on the calculator!

          • jaime taurosangastre candelas

            What that Table 2.5 shows is that between 2009 and 2012/13 tax rates fell for those on incomes of £20,000, and rose for those on extremely high incomes.

            Is that not a little inconvenient to explain the last year of a 13 year Labour Government and the first 3 years of a tory government?

          • jaime taurosangastre candelas

            What that Table 2.5 shows is that between 2009 and 2012/13 tax rates fell for those on incomes of £20,000, and rose for those on extremely high incomes. That to me seems just.

            Is that not a little inconvenient to explain the last year of a 13 year Labour Government and the first 3 years of a tory government? Judging by all of the howling, it is the accepted narrative that it is the other way around.

          • jaime taurosangastre candelas

            What that Table 2.5 shows is that between 2009 and 2012/13 tax rates fell for those on incomes of £20,000, and rose for those on extremely high incomes. That to me seems just.

            Is that not a little inconvenient to explain the last year of a 13 year Labour Government and the first 3 years of a tory government? Judging by all of the howling, it is the accepted narrative that it is the other way around.

          • rekrab

            It seems to tell me that the tax take fell due to the increase in unemployment from 2010/13, while those on the highest rate will see their taxtake fall due to the cut in the 50 pence top rate

          • rekrab

            It seems to tell me that the tax take fell due to the increase in unemployment from 2010/13, while those on the highest rate will see their taxtake fall due to the cut in the 50 pence top rate

        • CoolJHS

          I think you are missing the point, to be a top rate tax player involves more than just your basic salary; it includes benefits in kind, share options, bank interest and many other things that HMRC consider taxable.  This is the reason why these people need to complete a tax return or in the case of the filthy rich a top class accountant

          Unfortunately, your simple definition of ones salary as the sole determinant of whether they will benefit from the 50% rate cut is confused and inaccurate. 

    • JoeDM

      Yep.  Ed Miliband is almost certainly a “millionaire” based on his family assets and pension fund.

      What is the collective noun for champagne socialists?

      • TomFairfax

         ’What is the collective noun for champagne socialists?’

        Conscience

      • aracataca

        EM (and all Labour MPs) voted against the decrease in the top rate of tax Call me Dave and his liar in chief Clegg voted in favour- There’s your difference.

        • PeterBarnard

          Exactly, Aracataca. Labour people* who are fortunate enough to be earning ‘good incomes’ don’t mind high tax rates.

          * but, some lost their way as they claimed for Kit-Cats, bath plugs and all sorts of other sundries …

          Dennis Skinner had it right when he said, in a HoC debate, “No one starves on £65,000 a year.”

          • geedee0520

             So ‘Labour people’ who currently pay tax at 50% will send the difference to the Treasury when the rate falls to 45%?

            Yeah – right.

            Meanwhile, in France the 75% rate is ensuring London becomes even more wealthy.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

            True, but it may not be enough to buy a family home in the London area. House prices have skewed the cost of living in the UK in a way which hasn’t happened in say, Germany, the Netherlands. or Denmark

          • PeterBarnard

            I appreciate that the cost of housing in London may knock a big hole in a £65,000 wage, Mike, but I think that DS had in mind the class of people surrounding him in the chamber when he made his remark, to whom London house prices are somewhat irrelevant because the majority can claim for housing costs.

            You are right about the cost of housing in the UK, compared with the continent. What too many people do not care about is that high house prices are distinctly not beneficial to the economy at large – the £ that is spent on the mortgage can’t be used for consumption and hence, employment.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

        He owns a London house which has increased in price to over a million, like many London homes, but clearly he doesn’t and has never been a millionaire in terms of income

        • Hugh

          Yes, he owns a London house that has increased in value, is paid £135k odd a year and is married to a barrister. How has Cameron ever been a millionaire in terms of income?

        • Hugh

          Yes, he owns a London house that has increased in value, is paid £135k odd a year and is married to a barrister. How has Cameron ever been a millionaire in terms of income?

        • ovaljason

          Most importantly Ed and David re-wrote their father’s Will using a Dead of Variation to avoid inheritance tax.

          A dead of variation is currently legal. But it is one of the egregious tax avoidance loopholes the Brown government condemned and promised to close but they never did.

          But let’s be clear what a Deed of Variation involves: all the beneficiaries re-write their dead relatives’ last will and testament to cheat taxes.

        • Serbitar

          Nor is Miliband complaining about increasing direct taxation on the wealthy or planning to reduce it as far as I know. Fair dos.

        • JoeDM

          Assets are assets and a house, pension fund, stocks and shares etc. and other assets, are all part of a person’s or family’s wealth.

    • PeterBarnard

      I agree with the general theme of your comment, Roger M, on the mis-use of the term ’millionaire.’ As you correctly point out, the reduction in the additional rate of tax and the ‘£40,000 per millionaire’ only applies to those with a taxable income greater than £1m (actually, I think it applies to an income greater than  £1.15 million, because the first £150,000 is subject to the 20% and 40% rates).

      My old Concise OED (1964 vintage) strongly implies that ‘millionaire’ refers to liquid assets only : ‘person possessing million pounds, dollars, francs, etc.’ and , in that sense, it is equally misleading for the right to say that the rise in residential house prices – especially in London and the south in general – has created ‘thousands of millionaires.’

      The ’8,000 millionaires’ that the author quotes appears to be from table 2.5 in HMRC Income Tax Liabilities Statistics 2009-10 to 2012-13 April 2012 for fiscal 2012-13. Interestingly, HMRC estimate that there were 16,000 individuals in 2009-10 with an income of at least £1m and this dropped to 6,000 in 2010-11 (when the 50% rate became effective).

      Tax avoidance rules …

  • Graemeyh

    Still the Nasty Party isn’t it. Actually getting nastier.

  • ovaljason

    A self-proclaimed Marxist academic dies.  He’s accumulated such wealth that significant inheritance tax is due on his estate.

    There are 3 beneficiaries of the Marxist’s estate: a wife and two sons.  The sons are both self-proclaimed socialists.  They are high-up in a political party that claims to be socialist.

    Nevertheless, the wife and the two socialist sons take the unusual step of re-writing the Marxist’s will.

    Re-writing is will is a legal loophole but an unusual one.  In fact it’s considered so egregious that the socialist party that the two self-proclamed socialist sons represent have previously argued that the re-writing wills – or Deeds of Variation – should be stamped out.

    Who knew?  The effect of re-writing their Marxist father’s will was that the two socialist sons were able to fully mitigate any inheritance tax due.

    And so everyone lived happily ever after.  Apart from the poor and the sick and the old who would have benefited from that inheritance tax.

    Of course, Mark will never publish this.

  • AlanGiles

    “And it’s time Cameron to tell us if he is personally benefiting, says Michael Dugher ”

    Are you naturally naive, Mr Dugher, or do you take evening classes?.

    Of course Cameron will “personally benefit” as will all the other Ministers and MPs who qualify - which,  of course, will include those Labour politicians who qualify.

    The expenses scandal showed us just how many “honourable members” had sticky fingers and we know that there were as many avaricious Labour figures as there were other parties. When you get (admittedly, now defunct) ministers making false claims for non existant cleaning bills, or making us pay for “security” because she wished to live in Soho in luxury but was “scared”, or old fools buying £8000 TV sets and then blaming it on their “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, and ministers earning full ministerial salaries but being paltry enough to claim for Kit Kats, pet food, bath plugs and mucky DVDs, it is absurd for Labour to pretend that they have some special moral goodness.

    People like the Milibands, Byrne et al are not paupers and they are entitled to benefit from the tax rules, and you can be sure they will.

    Could we please have an end to these holier-than-thou posturings from people like you?.

  • AlanGiles

    “And it’s time Cameron to tell us if he is personally benefiting, says Michael Dugher ”

    Are you naturally naive, Mr Dugher, or do you take evening classes?.

    Of course Cameron will “personally benefit” as will all the other Ministers and MPs who qualify - which,  of course, will include those Labour politicians who qualify.

    The expenses scandal showed us just how many “honourable members” had sticky fingers and we know that there were as many avaricious Labour figures as there were other parties. When you get (admittedly, now defunct) ministers making false claims for non existant cleaning bills, or making us pay for “security” because she wished to live in Soho in luxury but was “scared”, or old fools buying £8000 TV sets and then blaming it on their “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, and ministers earning full ministerial salaries but being paltry enough to claim for Kit Kats, pet food, bath plugs and mucky DVDs, it is absurd for Labour to pretend that they have some special moral goodness.

    People like the Milibands, Byrne et al are not paupers and they are entitled to benefit from the tax rules, and you can be sure they will.

    Could we please have an end to these holier-than-thou posturings from people like you?.

  • AlanGiles

    “And it’s time Cameron to tell us if he is personally benefiting, says Michael Dugher ”

    Are you naturally naive, Mr Dugher, or do you take evening classes?.

    Of course Cameron will “personally benefit” as will all the other Ministers and MPs who qualify - which,  of course, will include those Labour politicians who qualify.

    The expenses scandal showed us just how many “honourable members” had sticky fingers and we know that there were as many avaricious Labour figures as there were other parties. When you get (admittedly, now defunct) ministers making false claims for non existant cleaning bills, or making us pay for “security” because she wished to live in Soho in luxury but was “scared”, or old fools buying £8000 TV sets and then blaming it on their “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, and ministers earning full ministerial salaries but being paltry enough to claim for Kit Kats, pet food, bath plugs and mucky DVDs, it is absurd for Labour to pretend that they have some special moral goodness.

    People like the Milibands, Byrne et al are not paupers and they are entitled to benefit from the tax rules, and you can be sure they will.

    Could we please have an end to these holier-than-thou posturings from people like you?.

  • Serbitar

    The world is Topsy-turvy. 

    How could anybody seriously think that reducing the top rate of tax by 5% could make any difference to the lives of those affected or encourage them to be more entrepreneurial than they were, invest more and risk more than they did before, creating strings of businesses and employing more people as a result.

    Ridiculous.

    But where is Labour on the swingeing welfare cuts that will bite to the bone from April 2013 onwards? Where, for the poor souls affected, losing even a few pounds a week can make the difference from surviving on the margin and privation, malnutrition and desperate poverty? How can the poorest amongst us cope with the introduction of the bedroom tax, massive reductions in the help they receive, and possibly having to pay 30% or more of their Council Tax out of benefits earmarked at subsistence levels to buy food, clothing and other essential utilities.

    If Iain Duncan Smith has his way with Universal Credit millions could be penalised and sanctioned for failing to “prove” that they spent 35 hours a week looking for work – I am not making this up! – including men and women already in part-time employment when “conditionality” is extended beyond the unemployed to encompass those who are part-time workers as well.

    A million working adults face benefits cuts next year

    This is truly frightening madness.

    Where is the Labour Party?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray

      In opposition. Which means there are limits to what we can do, particularly when the universal credit proposals remain shrouded in mystery as to what they will actually include, or indeed, whether they will be able to work at all

      • AlanGiles

        What annoys me more than almost anything else, is Labour’s pusillanimous attitude to welfare reform.

        It suits the likes of Byrne to shed croccodile  tears now, but when Purnell pushed Freud through, he himself said the full effects of the reforms would not be felt until 2013.

        Just Google:

        ”
        Lawrence Kay on James Purnell’s welfare reforms | Comment is free …
        http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/10/welfare-disability
        10 Dec 2008 – Lawrence Kay: Purnell’s reforms mark a necessary shift from unconditional to … Lawrence Kay on James Purnell’s welfare reforms …… face rigorous test by April 2013 to see if they are capable of working, says James Purnell …”

        April 2013. Duncan Smith is a disgusting little man, it’s true, BUT he is only firing the bullets Purnell and co gave him as ammunition.Some of us knew New Labour before they were virgins.

        • Serbitar

          As far as I can see Liam Byrne is proposing tentatively a worse and even harsher welfare system than that being brought into existence abortively by Iain Duncan Smith and David Freud. When Byrne talks about “regional benefit caps” by no means is he suggesting that the poor in London be granted benefits at a higher level than elsewhere, which is what some of the more gullible Labour supporters have supposed is the case, what Byrne is actually suggesting is setting benefit caps in the POOREST regions of the country at even LOWER levels compared to more prosperous areas in order to create a much bigger differential between benefits and minimum wages. In other words via a revamped “contributory welfare system” and measures like “regional benefit caps” et al little Liam wants to make the poor even poorer in order to make the slightly less poor seem a little better off.

          What a dreadful little man.

          • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

            If regional benefit caps become established then, as has been noted by Byrne’s cheer-leaders in the Conservative Party*, regional variations in public sector pay will follow.

            As Ed affirmed just before the conference: “We’re not in favour of regional pay. We don’t think it’s the answer. It’s not fair. It’s saying if you live outside London you’re going to be paid less, and we’re going to cut wages and make life more difficult for you.”

            Yet it still may be too early to move against Byrne and those of a similarly divisive and backward-looking orientation. Nonetheless, in the wake of the conference, Ed is much more secure than previously.

            No doubt Ed will address matters of policy presentation with his usual efficiency and ruthlessness, in due course. ; )

            *http://conservativehome.blogs.com/leftwatch/2012/01/boom-labour-concedes-principle-of-regionalised-state-pay-and-benefits.html

          • Serbitar

            We can only hope.

            Byrne has absolutely no redeeming features as far as I can see. Best he goes as soon as possible. It’s time to flick the last few dead remnants New Labour fag ash into the ashtray and move on… to invoke a somewhat carcinogenic metaphor… which somehow seems entirely appropriate considering that it’s the doubtable figure Liam Byrne that’s currently under scrutiny.

            Awful little thing.

            (Liam that is not the metaphor!)

          • Serbitar

            We can only hope.

            Byrne has absolutely no redeeming features as far as I can see. Best he goes as soon as possible. It’s time to flick the last dead remnants New Labour fag ash into the ashtray and move on… to invoke a somewhat carcinogenic metaphor… which somehow seems entirely appropriate considering that it’s the doubtable figure Liam Byrne that’s currently under scrutiny.

            Awful little thing.

            (Liam that is not the metaphor!)

      • Serbitar

        I was thinking more vocal than legislative, Mike. I keep my eyes peeled and my ears open as far as politics is concerned but have yet to hear a Labour politician saying anything similar to my post above even watered down to homoeopathic levels. But you are correct. Universal Credit looks set to hit the buffers over the next few years. With a lying right-wing dolt like Iain Duncan Smith driving the project forward and making it up as he goes the new benefit’s fate was sealed from the get-go.    

      • Serbitar

        I was thinking more vocal than legislative, Mike. I keep my eyes peeled and my ears open as far as politics is concerned but have yet to hear a Labour politician saying anything similar to my post above even watered down to homoeopathic levels. But you are correct. Universal Credit looks set to hit the buffers over the next few years. With a lying right-wing dolt like Iain Duncan Smith driving the project forward and making it up as he goes the new benefit’s fate was sealed from the get-go.    

      • Serbitar

        I was thinking more vocal than legislative, Mike. I keep my eyes peeled and my ears open as far as politics is concerned but have yet to hear a Labour politician saying anything similar to my post above even watered down to homoeopathic levels. But you are correct. Universal Credit looks set to hit the buffers over the next few years. With a lying right-wing dolt like Iain Duncan Smith driving the project forward and making it up as he goes the new benefit’s fate was sealed from the get-go.    

  • jaime taurosangastre candelas

    It can only be imagined that if the two sons were members of any other political party, from the Greens to the UKIP, that the protests from Labour would be never-ending.

    It also seems strange to me that the law allows this “Deed of Variation”, after the fact of death. What is the purpose of the “Last Will and Testament” if the inheritors then rewrite it to avoid paying the taxes that should be due? Maybe the Marxist did really want to pass his wealth to the state? It would be intellectually coherent with his beliefs during his life.

    • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

      But why should a marxist, as a person who opposes capitalism, want to hand wealth over to a capitialist state? To do so would be inconsistent and even hypocritical.

  • aracataca

    ‘Dead’ of variation? It’s dead is it? What the hell is a ‘dead’ of variation?

  • aracataca

    Given that you didn’t bother to check the spelling of deed I assume you have no references for this event -only I’d be interested to read them. 

  • aracataca

    It’s OK Oval I’ve Googled it.It comes from those august, learned and completely unbiased journals called The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. Turns out just to be a mechanism to ensure that the inherited property is shared out equally. The rest of the completely neutral articles is devoted to castigating the brothers for benefiting from the rise in property prices in London.
    Poor stuff really.

  • sdrpalmer

    Ed is clearly not in favour of redistribution of wealth when it involves the movement of his large, inherrited wealth in the direction of poorer people e.g. the average taxpayer.
    Mind you, when it comes to the redistribution of income from the average taxpayer to fund his excessive pension rights, he is all in favour.
    Funny, that.

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    The chutzpah of Peter Mandelson – and why we need more trade unionists

    By Mark Seddon

    Lord Mandelson, or Baron Mandelson of Foy, as he should be referred to since he was packed off to the House of Lords by a small cabal, recently accused the Unite union of ‘manipulating selection procedures’ in the Labour Party. He went on to warn Ed Miliband that this ‘stores up danger for a future Labour government’. Irony has always been in as short supply as sheer chutzpah has been plentiful with old Mandy – but since his faithful disciple [...]

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  • News Cameron says no more EU-turns – Media roundup: May 22nd, 2013

    Cameron says no more EU-turns – Media roundup: May 22nd, 2013

    Subscribers to our morning email get the best of LabourList – including the Media and blog round up – every weekday morning. If you were a subscriber you would have already received this in your inbox. You can sign up here. Cameron says no more EU-turns “After one of his most difficult weeks since becoming prime minister, David Cameron put in a polished and assured peformance on the Today programme this morning. The most notable line came on Europe, with Cameron [...]

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