Voters will see policies like the wage cap as embracing the politics of envy – and they will never forgive us for it, writes Dom Anderson
Last week I waited for the fabled Jeremy Corbyn relaunch with trepidation, I wondered quite how someone who has so far proven so unpopular with voters could magically become a populist leader overnight. The answer, it seems, was: they basically cannot.
I remember the Tories’ attempt to pitch to the centre in George Osborne’s final budget and coming away feeling as though they had parked their tanks firmly on Labour’s lawn. Last week, the general feeling seemed to be that Corbyn had parked our tank firmly in a quiet car park at the back of a remote service station somewhere on the A14.
If the team around Corbyn think that flirting with the idea of a wage cap is going to resonate with anyone outside of the academic left then I fear they are deluded. A policy like this wont just lose us our share of the vote with more well off people, it will turn off the very people who go out everyday to earn a hard day’s living, dreaming of something better for their children.
I am a councillor and a union organiser; I see poverty on a daily basis. The answer to our poverty problem lies at formulating initiatives at the bottom line and not in creating an atmosphere of envy. Sowing the seeds of resentment for wealth will only create a society where people’s fortunes are fixed and opportunities scarce. When I tuck my daughter in at night, I make a point of kissing her on the head and telling her I am proud of her and that she can achieve anything. I am doing nothing special; millions of working class people are doing exactly that every night. We have aspirations for our children and ourselves. How could Labour possibly win the support of those people with a policy like a wage cap?
If we become the party that punishes dream and aspirations then we are finished. I am not wealthy and nor is my family. One of the last things I remember my granddad saying to me when I told him I was standing for public office was that he expected that of me and that he made the decision to leave Jamaica in the 1960’s so his grandkids could be councillors and find some degree of success. By promoting an anti-wealth and anti-success message we don’t impact heavily on the super rich, we attack something way more fragile and important. We attack the hopes and dreams of those who have very little.
Labour must be a vehicle for social mobility and social progress, or it is nothing.
––––––––––––
Dom Anderson is a Labour councillor. He tweets at @DomAnderson_1
Labour is no longer the second-choice party of the 1%. That’s good. The problem is that some of the Blairite old guard are still so relaxed about the poor, yet hysterical about action to address the greediness of the rich, and the party is being held back in the polls.
The notion that the best way to feed the poor is to pour more and more food onto the tables of the rich until some of it spills over the edge into the grateful mouths of the poor is not going to get me to vote Labour. Even Peter Mandelson is embarrassed and no longer ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes’. And, by and large, they still don’t pay their taxes.
So I congratulate Corbyn for calling for debate about the amount of inequality we should put up with, especially when this month we learn from Oxfam that 8 multi-billionaires own as much wealth as the 3.6 billion poorest half of the world and from the High Pay Centre that FTSE CEOs ‘earn’ in 2.5 days what the average worker gets paid in a year.
If they paid their fair share of tax there would be no problem. It is the knowledge that they don’t and won’t that annoys me.
By the way, does anyone know the accurate words and source of a quote by Julius Nyrere to the effect that ‘if there is not enough in the kitty for all to have a reasonable minimum then there certainly isn’t enough for a few to have a lot’? I would be very grateful.
I’m confused about this policy.
I’ve read articles calling it a ‘wage cap’ which is just populist and ridiculous. Taking wages away from others won’t solve anyones problem.
I have also seen commentary calling it ‘fairer distribution’. That policy is about wage rises and calls for the highest earners rise to be no more than X times the lowerest earner. That’s a great policy to me on so many levels. All workers share rewards of their labour. Isn’t that why we are here? The problem is how to enforce it given our globalised economy.
Is their two policies or has the media been poorly managed again? Anyone know (not guess please).
Few people begrudge reward for merit.
The author seems confused in thinking that success in our society is meritorious when on so many, many, many occasions it is a reward for collusion, networking, subservience, exploitative or parasitical behaviour and on occasions corruption. The author then follows this up by attacking critics of parasitical norms as sufferers of jealously.
I must admit to be very, very worried that we have Labour members who really have no compass for considering reward. There is a danger of being open to lucrative offers from the V & A in the total absence of any curatorial experience whilst having the merit of making of public pronouncements on the introduction of museum charges or even worse seduction by Tories who do not grasp the inefficiencies of the last few decades of the decline of capitalism and its associated rewards for compliance.
Well said Verity. This article is a defence of the status quo. It uses words like aspiration and dreams when it should be talking of greed and exploitation. As seems usual Progress is outflanked on the Left by Mrs May. She criticises the Davos elite for their actions while Progress writers want to praise them.
We want a government that protects the rights of working people and gives them the opportunity to improve their position. Progress is no longer moderate or centrists. It wants to maintain the present political establishment and finds something deeply unsettling and threatening about Corbyn. They do not see his politics as legitimate or admissible because they challenge this establishment.
I agree completely with this article and it’s good to know that some on the left are waking up to the fact that most people just want a comfortable life and to better themselves.
It’s why many working class people voted for Thatcher – and Reagan in the US. They’re not interested in wealth redistribution, they’re interested in wealth creation – their own wealth, not someone else’s being forcibly taken and given to them, which is patronising.
And anyway, wealth redistribution is a game of diminishing returns that goes something like this:
1) Tax the rich more.
2) Rich find ways to avoid tax and government loses revenue
3) Tax rich more.
4) Rich become disillusioned and either take their money elsewhere, because they can, or get out of wealth creation altogether because there is less incentive.
5) Government loses more revenue.
6) Repeat above, until revenue declines so much that government has to borrow more.
7) Eventually, debt becomes unsustainable and nobody will lend the government any more money so it just prints it.
8) Currency devalues and a siege economy is introduced with import/export tariffs, price/wage commissions and limits on money going out of the country.
9) Success! Equality is achieved – but everyone is poorer. Socialist intellectuals rejoice but working class are miserable and revolt.
10) Yet another country learns that socialist economics do not work.
Being anti-Corbyn won’t bring victory. Any more than being anti-Brown or anti-Miliband did.
The French recently tried raising top rates of tax to well over 50%. Rather unsurprisingly the rich left France. Tax take fell.
The hallmark of idiots and the incompetent is repeating the mistakes of others. or proposing to do so.
People forget that there was an effective maximum wage in this country up to about 1979.
There was an income tax band charging 83% with a surtax of 15% for investment income. That meant that some income was taxed at 98%.
There was a kind of person we do not hear about here any more: ‘tax exiles’. People like Michael Caine and Roger Moore left these shores and took their incomes with them. Others arranged their affairs so that their offshore comp0anies were paid for their labours.
So the maximum wage has been tried here. It did not work. This was also at a time when wage rises were limited as well. It turned the country into a nation of fiddlers.