Taxing

To cut taxes or not to cut taxes, that is the question being asked at the Conservative Party conference. Traditionally the Tories have been the party of tax cuts. It's usually the big surprise they come out with in the Leader's speech, although everyone's seen it bulging under the three-piece suit.

This morning it was reported on the news that some right-wing MPs went to the bother of hiring a steamroller to illustrate their opinion that taxes should be, wait for it, 'steamrollered'. You gotta love 'em.

But unfortunately this year, to muttering and despondency, David Cameron has decided against announcing tax cuts for the simple reason that he doesn't know if they';d be able to meet those promises if they came into power. There's a novel idea - linking the concept of tax to the concept of public spending. Politicians go on as if tax is A Very Bad Thing. People should make their own choices, they say. Robbing the taxpayer, they say. Stealth taxes, they say. Not a peep about the public services which these taxes are going to fund.

We've sold off the family silver in the shape of the formerly nationalised industries and our manufacturing industries. Now the boring infrastructure of the country is in private hands - coal, water, electricity, airways, railways, communications - and we've learned the hard lesson that private enterprises can be just as inefficient, wasteful and shoddily run as their public predecessors. The major difference being that the nationalised ones actually had a responsibility to keep working for the sake of the country, rather than bleating that certain necessary undertaking, such as making sure the trains run when they're supposed to, or that half the water supply doesn't drain away through leaks in unmaintained pipes, don't make economic sense for the shareholders. The manufacturing industry sector in this country, such as it is, is almost exclusively owned by other nations, Japan, America or Germany among them. So yes, there are jobs, but the profits of these industries wing their way out of the country. Bless you, Margaret Thatcher.

So the opportunities for raising funds to actually run the country start to look a little thin. Taxation has to be a key method, so to witter on blithely about how the Evil Labour Government is robbing its people through taxation is just daft. What are you going to do instead? Or is your big idea to stop performing any public services at all, but simply to frame legislation and supervide the closing down sale of GB Inc.? At least David Cameron, for all his polished plastic suavete, isn't quite down to the lowest common denominator of the Tory party whose big idea is to emulate their last 'successful' leader and carry on the legacy of St Margaret. He's won a titchy bit of respect from me for that. I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to vote Conservative, but as Tory leaders go, he's not the worst.