OPINION - The inevitable truth about Labour and tax

Heard the one about the student who swears blind they’ve never had a drink, drugs nor sex? Seems unlikely so you challenge them … and they confess: “There is one thing… I sometimes tell lies”.

Having worked in No10 for Boris Johnson, I’m painfully aware of the consequences for a politician of being deemed untrustworthy, but he isn’t standing in this election so I won’t list all the important promises he kept in power if you agree not to replay that stuck record. Let’s focus instead on the man the bookies say is now 1-33 favourite to be the next prime minister.

Keir Starmer seems straight, boringly so in that twisted way personal weaknesses are turned into strengths when it fits the dominant narrative of the time. But is he? I’m not talking about his shifty response to the beer and curry night he was photographed enjoying in Durham while attacking the government over partygate.

I’m not even pondering the professional reality of a career at the Bar — where you are paid (handsomely) to make the case for a client whether you think they are guilty or not. Based on what they call the “cab rank” principle, barristers pride themselves on being able to argue either side of a case, regardless of what their heart and conscience may tell them is the truth.

Having thought hard about being a barrister myself I appreciate that even scumbags deserve due process and someone has to represent them. I won’t hold that against him, but it does explain why he was so at ease five years ago telling us repeatedly that Jeremy Corbyn would make “a great prime minister”. His professional modus operandi is to say whatever it takes to advance his cause.

To his credit, Starmer has recently kicked Corbyn out of the party, and I’m not blind to the significant overhaul he has presided over in a relatively short period at the helm. So this is not a point about political positioning but integrity.

Starmer was perfectly entitled to change his mind about Corbyn, but that’s not what happened. A man who will soon have his finger on the nuclear button and his hands on the key levers of our economy has basically acknowledged that he didn’t believe what he told us, time and time again, at the last election because it wasn’t true. I don’t drink, smoke nor cheat. I just sometimes lie, which begs the question can we trust what he tells us now, not least on tax.

As an experienced and successful barrister he’s cunningly done a little plea bargaining ahead of polling day. Sure we’ll put up taxes, to the tune of a very specific £8.6 billion, levied on non-doms, tax avoiders and the parents of privately- educated children. That is clearly fine for the majority of the population, because they are not in any of those categories.

Then there’s a firm promise, a “triple lock” no less, that neither income tax, national insurance nor VAT will go up. To a jury, in court perhaps, that would sound pretty exhaustive, but it’s not.

There are countless means by which a chancellor can pick your pocket without touching those headline rates. Gordon Brown was a master of it when Labour were last in power.

Some say his “stealth tax” on pensions alone cost us £100 billion and there were plenty more impenetrably complex schemes to fund his pet projects. It’s only reasonable to suspect Rachel Reeves of similar plans and we have all witnessed the verbal acrobatics over the last few days as Starmer has sought to imply that he won’t hit us hard with extra fuel duty, capital gains, council tax or stamp duty, without actually ruling any of them out.

Conservative chancellors, including the current Prime Minister, also found innovative ways of raising our taxes, but Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt had to pick up the tab after a £400 billion splurge of critical spending that was almost universally approved by a population anxious that a global pandemic would kill them.

There were some rogue voices opposed to lockdown, furlough and other spectacularly costly schemes at the time, but they weren’t on the Left and where Labour was in charge, in my native Wales, the lockdown was longer and even harsher.

My point is that no one planned that wild spending spree, nor was it the consequence of incompetence, complacency nor a point of ideological principle. Had we not been hit by a pandemic, followed swiftly by war in Europe, I think we all know that a Conservative government would have been looking to cut taxes not hike them.

The point of principle is central here, because it reflects the historic divide between Left and Right. Conservatives are defined first and foremost by a belief that people are better equipped to decide how to spend their money than the state. Taxes are a tool to raise what’s needed for those things that only the state can provide — defence, security, infrastructure, schools, hospitals and a safety net of benefits for those who can’t fend for themselves.

The Left go further, seeing tax as a key weapon in their moral mission to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Many on the Left believe they are better people because of that belief and they’d rather be out of power than step off that high moral ground. But after four heavy defeats, the craving for power got stronger and the more pragmatic in Labour ranks have concluded that they have no choice but to imitate the traditional conservative approach to tax.

So have a long hard think about his. Would a Labour government really prefer to hand us back more of our own money than to spend it on our behalf? I’m not sitting here with a calculator and contrived spreadsheet of Labour priorities, but appealing to your gut instinct.

Many millions are hoping that Starmer has an ambitious plan to spend more, and if you’re one of them, head off to the polling booth in a hurry.

But if you think that taxes are too high, and that post pandemic we don’t need such a big state, then don’t be fooled that voting Labour is compatible with that.