The Budget on Wednesday did not contain any surprises.
Taxes up across the board. Higher Capital Gains Tax, higher National Insurance contributions for employers, higher inheritance tax on farms and businesses, and not least VAT for the first time on school fees.
This was a pure socialist Budget . The government’s pledge not to increase taxes on “working people” has led to Labour essentially hitting business and capital hard. The £40billion has “to be paid for”, says the government. It’s clear who has to foot the bill.
In every instance business will have to pay. Employers will pay more, parents of children at private schools will pay more, farmers will pay more to inherit farms from their parents.
For small business, the Budget was a disaster. As a Tory backbencher in 2010, we used to call the National Insurance paid by employers a “jobs tax”. That is exactly what it is. A tax on employers for giving jobs to people.
“For small business, the Budget was a disaster,” says Kwasi Kwarteng
PA
Increasing this tax makes it much less likely that employers will take on more employees. Anecdotally, companies are already finding ways to lay off staff.
Businessmen and women are less inclined to invest as a consequence of Labour’s tax grab. Why hire more people, if your tax is going up on each person you employ?
Behind this tax grab on capital, lies a pernicious ideology, socialism. To a socialist, influenced as they are by Karl Marx, society is made up of different classes, all involved in a struggle against each other.
As Marx said, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other- Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”.
You can hammer the “capitalists”, the “bourgeoisie”, all you like according to socialists. Workers, in their misguided view, won’t be affected. That’s what happened on Wednesday. Even the Guardian called it old fashioned “tax and spend”.
In reality, any attack on employers will be paid ultimately by the workers. Employers, business owners, will hike up prices of their goods to recover some of the money they lose in higher taxes. They will also be more inclined to lay off workers or keep wages lower, all in order to pay the government more tax.
The Marxist mindset also underpins one of Labour’s favourite slogans, “for the many, not the few”. The Marxist instinctively understands this to mean, “for the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie”.
This may all seem theoretical. It is important, however, to know where these people are coming from.
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When you look at some of the other measures this government of socialist “intellectuals” are leading you can see the devil’s brew they are concocting.
The deal with the unions, releasing prisoners, promoting cancel culture in the interests of woke ideology – all of this points to the same conclusion. This is the most socialist government we have had in Britain in decades.
Conservatives in government, like me, bear some responsibility in letting these Marxists into power, but to be fair to the electorate, Labour kept very quiet about their plans.
Already many people are expressing buyers’ remorse.
One friend texted me today. I know he has voted Conservative in the past. He voted Labour this time. He expressed bitter regret about his choices.
“This is socialism,” I replied. “This is what you voted for”. I also added “it will get worse”.
Welcome to the dawn of socialist Britain.
Of course, none of this will make Britain more prosperous or more competitive.
Wealth creators are leaving Britain in spades, just as more people who seek to benefit from the generosity of the state are coming into the country.
I am inclined to agree with Jeremy Clarkson: this lot will be voted out, God willing, after five years, but what damage they will do in that time, only time will tell.
