We take a hiding from the rich
A SUPER-SNEAKY move by the Tory Government on Monday averted what could have been a terrible constitutional crisis.
I’m not talking about trumped-up claims of a Brexit power grab of Brussels regulations, or Keith Brown’s loose talk of an illegal independence referendum.
No, the constitutional crisis avoided in the Commons was to save the face of the super-wealthy who secret their money in the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
Fearing a defeat that would force these tax-haven islands to comply with financial transparency rules, the Government did what has become something of a habit and dramatically delayed the Commons debate.
The islands had threatened a constitutional crisis if they were forced by Westminster to introduce public registers revealing just who owns companies there.
Just who would lead the Jersey Yes campaign is not clear but the pressure from the offshore accountants independence conglomerate had the desired effect.
These islands have the protection of the Queen, the Royal Navy, and bear passports of whatever colour the UK finally settles on. But they are selfgoverning and not normally bound by legislation passed by Westminster.
Regulation without representation would be on the Boston tea party scale of a crisis, not the Keith Brown storm in a tea cup kind.
So the Crown dependencies will continue with their cloaked, tax haven status, hiding the identity of the super-rich, the shady and the owners of many acres of Scottish land who remain anonymous, itself a shameful state of 21st century affairs.
The islands claim that they have sufficient financial safeguards and that transparency would undermine their status as offshore havens (which I thought was the point) and push money launderers and the like to the far reaches of slack regulation, places like, er, the British Virgin Islands.
In fact, the British Overseas Territories like Caymen and BVI are being forced to publish ownership registers – but that too has been watered down and delayed until 2023.
I don’t think the Conservative Government fears a rise of an Independence for Guernsey movement.
The reason it pulled the legislation to avoid more transparency is more likely because it is beholden to its own party funders. The Tories have raised more than £5.5million in the last decade from donors living in tax havens and their UK companies. People who are resident abroad for tax purposes can still register as overseas voters and so get around electoral laws that ban donations from abroad.
A Times investigation has revealed a third of British billionaires have moved to tax havens over the past decade. So, no surprise that they would want to preserve both their status, their secrecy and their loot.
Some well-timed donations to the party of government appears to have been money well spent.
Why should we be bothered by what rich people do with their money, they earned it, after all?
The trouble is that all the tax they do not pay has to be met by the rest of us. According to Oxfam, the British Crown dependencies are at the heart of a A REFLECTIVE John McDonnell told me this week that in the past, with his provocative pro-IRA comments, he was part of the sectarian problem.
Some have the Labour Shadow Chancellor down as a dangerous, unreformed Marxist, but McDonnell could be the radical economic remedy that austerity Britain is crying out for.
Cleverer than Corbyn, he knows he has to tack to get into Downing Street. It might be that with age comes wisdom, but on his remorse over past IRA comments, it struck me that he has genuinely changed his mind and his attitude. global tax avoidance network that costs 170billion US dollars a year for poorer countries.
The people who should be at the apex of the tax system, whose British businesses reap all the benefits of the open and well regulated UK economy, continue to legally minimise their exposure to tax.
Joining the dots, you can see how generous political donations to the party of government keep it that way.
The symbolism of Monday’s pulled vote is as profound as any claim from the SNP that Scotland is being somehow constitutionally mistreated by Westminster.
The message is one rule for the rich and one for the rest of us, and that only adds to the public perception of a very broken politics.