A modern window tax – and why David’s departure made me glad I campaigned for Ed

Just as the walls went up in place of windows in 1696, as King William III introduced the infamous Window Tax, so I predict that the walls will shortly be coming down – as desperate people try and avoid the bedroom tax by taking a sledge hammer to them. The analogies don’t end there; King William’s Window Tax was dressed up as a ‘Duty upon houses for making good the deficiency of the clipped money’. In other words the Government had run short of money, principally because there was no such thing as income tax, and those that had the money didn’t want to pay tax.

Fast forward the centuries and it is once again apparent that the Government is short of money, largely because it has been tipped down a black-hole of bank nationalisation and bail-out. Then as now, the rich don’t want to pay tax if they can help it, and so to sugar the pill, the Government have cut the top rate of tax for then in the very week that they have introduced a bedroom tax and taken an axe to welfare.  If the Tories could really have their way they would bring in a ‘flat tax’ to replace income tax, thereby allowing the millionaires and billionaires to pay even less tax. But the question is; what happened to Iain Duncan Smith, who having been parted from the leadership of his party, re-invented himself, as did once John Profumo, as a friend of the poor and the dispossessed?

Welfare Minister Iain Duncan Smith supposedly enjoyed his epiphany on a visit to Easterhouse in Glasgow a few years back. Perhaps this is where it occurred to him that he could live on £53 a week. After all Duncan Smith does have something in common with people who live on the sprawling Easterhouse Estate – he lives on an estate too – the Swanbourne Estate, owned by the Cottesloe family.

As it happens I know the area well having canvassed the village of Swanbourne on numerous occasions, not least when I was standing as the Labour candidate against sitting Tory incumbent, John Bercow. Having knocked on Ian Duncan Smith’s door, I suspect he probably could live on £53 a week if he simply stayed there. The reason being is that he apparently lives in the huge pile rent free, having married Lord Cottesloe’s daughter. I bet he doesn’t have to pay the electricity bill, or pay for the groceries.

But in fairness to him, I do know that he occasionally nips out to buy an Indian take-away from the Maharabhat Indian Restaurant in Winslow.  I know that because the Manager will usually tell me. He also used to tell me that few people recognised IDS, who was not so long ago known as the ‘quiet man’. My suggestion that he put a framed picture of IDS next door to one of the late Panchen Lama of Tibet, since both resembled one another, never got taken up. But in retrospect, I’m glad that it didn’t.  Ian Duncan Smith deserves some recognition, but not that sort of reverential recognition. But the next time I see IDS at Winslow Service Station waiting to pay for his petrol, I promise that I will ask him how he is getting on with his £53 a week.

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The message from last week’s really rather cloying media coverage of the impending departure of David Miliband to head up the charity International Rescue in New York, is that politicians are only likely to be greeted with anything approaching reverence and respect either when they stop being politicians or pass away.

For me most of the coverage only served to remind me why I campaigned and voted for his brother Ed in the first place. Particularly infuriating were the never ending, glib references to Ed ‘winning with the votes of trades unionists’, as though trades unionists are some second class citizens who don’t really deserve a vote at all.

It is David’s misfortune that the chatterati had largely that he was the ‘natural heir’, rather forgetting that the foot soldiers of what used to be described as ‘this great Movement of ours’ actually get to vote in an electoral college.  When we all did, the chatterati didn’t really like the outcome and so for months now have bored readers and listeners with endless, er, chatter and speculation about the two brothers.

Now David has landed himself a real opportunity to do some good – and over there, the rest of us can make sure that the distractions are removed and that Labour and Ed are ready for office – and power-  over here.