The manifesto sketches out an answer to Britain’s broken model. The current model is bankrupt: it’s not just unjust, it’s irrational. It concentrates wealth in very few hands – the richest 1,000 British people enjoyed a 14% jump in their fortunes over the past year – while wages have suffered the longest squeeze in generations. It fails to build the housing the country needs. It robs many communities of secure, properly paid, skilled jobs. It leaves most people in poverty in work, earning their poverty. It allows multinational corporations to pay little or no tax while small businesses struggle.
It reduces the country’s national jewel – its National Health Service – to a state of “humanitarian crisis”, as the British Red Cross put it. It saddles its younger generation with debt. It transforms public utilities into cash cows for profiteers who prioritise making a short-term buck over the needs of consumers. We could go on. Again, this is one of the richest countries on earth. It’s not a lack of wealth or resources holding Britain back from curing its many ills: it’s a lack of political willpower.
There’s a commitment that 95% of Britons won’t pay any more tax: fair, after the Tories’ unprecedented squeeze on wages. Instead, the top 5% of earners will be asked to pay a bit more: also fair, given they’re doing better than ever. If companies choose to pay salaries that are 25 times higher than the living wage, they’ll be expected to pay a bit more tax; if they pay salaries 20 times higher than the average income, then a bit more than that. Corporation tax will be hiked, but it will still be lower than the United States. A Robin Hood tax on financial transactions – which, as Labour’s Rachel Reeves puts it, both raises money and curbs excessive risk-taking which imperils our economy – would raise even more money, as will an all-out war against tax avoidance.
The billions raised can be invested in education to realise the potential of the next generation – to modernise our NHS so it can meet the needs of an ageing population; to upgrade Britain’s feeble infrastructure; and to build the housing the country desperately needs. Free childcare will reduce pressure on families forced to make difficult decisions about raising families and having a career; while a triple-lock on pensions will protect poorer pensioners who built this country with their hard graft.
