Osborne’s “progressive force” refuses to embrace progressive taxation

By Will Straw / @wdjstraw

In his keynote speech at Demos, titled “Progressive reform in an age of austerity,” George Osborne refused to embrace a policy of progressive taxation or set out what a progressive foreign policy under a Conservative government would mean.

Osborne claimed that, “the Conservative Party is now the dominant progressive force in British politics.” But answering my question on whether the Conservative party would scrap their regressive proposal to raise the threshold on inheritance tax to £1 million, Osborne embraced his policy which was intended, he said, “to reward aspiration and encourage saving for retirement.”

When it was announced in 2007, the Conservative party’s inheritance tax policy was costed at £3 billion. As Tim Horton of the Fabian Society has explained on Newsnight, the tax is progressive since the top 50% of people in the UK own 93% of the wealth, and the bottom 50% own just 7%. Research by the Labour party suggests that the proposed cut would be worth an average of £200,000 for 3,000 millionaires.

Later, in answer to a question about foreign policy, Osborne said, “Michael Gove and I stay silent on foreign policy.” But Michael Gove’s 2006 book, Celsius 7/7 was described by the Telegraph as, “a ferocious philippic directed against Islamists and their Western appeasers.”