Balls to Labour

Read it and weep.

 Anyone who thinks we live in a functioning democracy where the poorest and most vulnerable can look to Labour for salvation should read the passage below.

   “Private Eye and others were praised by name when Labour’s tax spokeswoman, shadow exchequer secretary Catherine McKinnell, spoke in the Commons debate on tax avoidance. But more useful would be some actual opposition to coalition policies.

A raft of recent measures, like the maximum 5 percent tax rate for financial profits diverted to tax havens (yes, the havens that were meant to have been closed after the financial crisis), make offshore tax dodging not just easier but arguably obligatory for British multinationals. 

     Yet despite the Eye having repeatedly pointed out the effect of the changes well ahead of their enactment, the Labour opposition has sat on its hands. Perhaps this is because its shadow ministers have been taking advice from the very accountancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, that most actively promotes offshore financing schemes –– as proved by the exposure of hundreds of its Luxembourg ruses last year (Eye 1315) on top of the multi-billion pound offshore set-ups it devised for Vodaphone (Eyes passim ad nauseam). 

    Shadow chancellor Ed Balls, meanwhile, has decided that, since the anti-tax avoidance bandwagon won’t stop rolling, he perhaps ought to jump on, prompting a blog last week on the shortcomings of government tax policy. The trouble is that the ‘light touch’ tax system that gave us the Vodaphone and Starbucks scandal (to name but two) was a New Labour creation. Especially rich was Balls’ complaint that cuts at HM Revenue & Customs had been ‘too far and too fast’, when the largest and most economically illiterate cuts were instigated under Gordon Brown’s ‘efficiency’ programme while his chief economic adviser was none other than, er, Ed Balls.”  Private Eye 25/1/13

So, ‘All in this together are we?’

Having read the insight above, and assuming that you are still a Labour supporter who happens to live in a Labour constituency, then please arrange an appointment with your MP and let him or her know what you think. If your MP is Blunkett or Miliband the elder, then don’t bother wasting your time. Even though they represent two of the poorest constituencies in the country they are both pre-occupied with making themselves very wealthy. Should you not have a Labour MP, then use every opportunity that arises to ram home just how deeply hypocritical and cynical the Westminster party has become. This may be to a local councillor or anyone who professes support for Labour. 

Judge the Labour party at Westminster by their deeds and ignore the rhetoric - it is mostly meaningless bullshit from a cynical bunch of bubble-dwellers who are a disgrace to the traditions and history of the Labour party.