Corbyn’s tax won’t build many hospitals

The Left’s credo is claptrap – without wealth creators, Britain would resemble North Korea

One year ago tomorrow, the Conservatives launched their general election manifesto. In promising better times for all, David Cameron evoked that irrepressibly sunny BBC sitcom The Good Life. You may remember the programme: it is like a metaphor for our politics. In one house lives a well-off middle-class couple, the Leadbetters, all airs, graces and Seventies bad taste. Next door are the Goods, eking out a living off the land, collars turned up against the vicissitudes of the modern world, eschewing the comforts it can provide.

You are supposed to admire the latter while deriding the former. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all live simply, like the Goods? But Tom and Barbara are forever popping next door because there are things their neighbours have that they need but can no longer afford. They rely upon the largesse of others to survive. Most of us do.

One way of looking at the financial details furnished by David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson is to seethe with indignation at the amount of money they pocket. Between them in the past year they received about £1 million in taxable income, with Mr Johnson easily the best remunerated. But there is another way to consider these figures and that is to look at the tax they paid. Between them, this amounted to £425,000.

How you see this all depends on whether you subscribe to the politics of envy or live in the real world. Jeremy Corbyn and the far Left caucus that has hijacked the Labour Party is even more in thrall to the notion that wealth is bad than Ed Miliband was. His family, after all, was quite content to avail itself of something called a deed of variation to limit the tax to be paid on a property inherited by himself and his brother, David.

Apparently, this sort of judicious planning is quite acceptable in Leftwing media circles. I cannot recall them directing the same outrage at Mr Miliband that Mr Cameron has had to endure over a gift from his mother that might also avoid inheritance tax. We have heard little from Hilary Benn, whose father was Mr Corbyn’s hero and mentor. Yet for all his socialist beliefs in redistribution and soaking the rich, Tony Benn ensured his family was insulated from the covetous interest of the taxman when he died, leaving an estate valued at £5 million.

He planned ahead to ensure the children inherited directly from their mother – no different from Mr Cameron, in other words. Good for him, say I; and so do most people in the land. Why should Mr Benn not make provision for his children and limit their liability for inheritance tax?

It is the overpowering stench of humbug that is the hardest to stomach. In the Commons on Monday, Mr Corbyn said it was one rule for the rich and another for the rest of us. This is demagogic clap-trap. In reality, the doctrine to which the Left subscribes has always been: “Do as we say, not as we do.”

Moreover, the Corbyn credo is not only populist rubbish intended to rouse the mob; it is also economically insane. The Tory trio whose financial information has been published handed over more than £400,000 to the Exchequer last year to pay for the NHS, schools, welfare and all the other services on which Labour wants to spend more. Mr Corbyn contributed £18,500 – the income tax on his MP’s salary. Doubtless he thinks this demonstrates he is a horny-handed son of toil. But in truth it shows that over his working lifetime he is almost certainly a net beneficiary of the system: he has taken out more than he put in – not least because his entire career has been funded by the state and he has no savings.

While he will have contributed more through VAT and duties (though precious little since he does not drink, drive or smoke), it is unlikely to have been enough to pay for the services he consumed. Without the wealth creators, Mr Corbyn’s Socialist nirvana would resemble North Korea.

The protesters in Whitehall last weekend demanding the Prime Minister’s resignation for the offence of being well-off should remember the salutary tale of the 10 drinkers who settle their £100 weekly bar bill in roughly the same way we pay our taxes. The first four men (the poorest) pay nothing; the fifth pays £1; the sixth £3; the seventh £7; the eighth £12; the ninth £18; and the 10th man, the richest, pays £59. When the barman gives them a £20 discount for being good customers, they decide to pay the new £80 bill in the same progressive way. So the fifth man, like the first four, now pays nothing, a 100 per cent saving; the sixth man pays £2 instead of £3 (a 33 per cent saving); and on up to the 10th man, who pays £49 instead of £59 (a 17 per cent saving).

No one loses. But when they compare their savings, the sixth man complains that he is only getting £1 while the first four point out that they receive nothing. The richest man, by contrast, gets £10. “The system exploits the poor,” they object. “The wealthy get all the breaks!” So the nine men surround the 10th and beat him up. The next week he doesn’t show up at the bar and when they come to pay, they don’t have enough money between them to cover even half the bill.

In his speech launching the Tory manifesto last year, Mr Cameron emphasised the virtues of aspiration and self-reliance. Underpinning the Conservative strategy was one fundamental truth: that without enterprise, wealth creation and a growing economy there would be no more money for the NHS, no extra help for child care, indeed no additional assistance and investment of any kind.

What people want is the wherewithal to work, to keep more of their own money, to look after their families, to save for their dotage and leave something for their children. That was the prospectus on which the Conservatives won the election, while the country repudiated Labour’s fantasyland offering. But the allure of the Labour message remains strong because it taps into a deep well of popular grievance with perceived injustice that needs to be constantly confuted. The egalitarian fetish that consumes the Left – especially those among its ranks who are far better off than most people in the country – would have us all living from hand to mouth, like Tom and Barbara Good.