Jackie Bailie and Tom Harris consider whether Scottish Labour was right to promise to raise income tax
[column-group][column]Tom Harris
Promising higher taxes was a flawed strategy for Scottish Labour in 2016. And yet it was also entirely sensible and logical, depending on the party’s aims.
Context is everything, particularly with regards to Scottish politics. Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Labour’s relatively new yet already battle-scarred leader, faced an impossible quandary as the launch of the Scottish parliament elections loomed. What should be her party’s aims in May? To form a government at Holyrood? Or establish Scottish Labour as the unchallenged official opposition to the Scottish National party?
Unfortunately, given the condition of politics in Scotland and the state of Scottish Labour, the first option really was not an option at all. And though events have shown that even the more modest second option was not achieved, it was the only realistic target for Dugdale to aim at.
So in fact, although the political paradigm in Scotland throughout the devolution years has been Labour v the SNP, for Labour in 2016, the real enemy was, once again, the Scottish Conservatives. We knew we were not going to win and we knew we would have a fight on our hands to hold on to second place. Yes, we had to prove we were more able to hold the SNP government to account, but we also had to train our fire on Ruth Davidson’s party in a way we had not needed to for many years. We had got out of the habit, and it showed.
Dugdale hoped that adopting a deliberately leftwing platform would put the SNP on the back foot, exposing them as the centre-right, rather than radical leftwing, party we know them to be. In this she achieved some success: activists were reassured we were still ‘of the left’ and many Twitter arguments were won using our trump card. The tactic was rather less successful, however, at the ballot box.
Perhaps there was a calculation that tax-resistant centre-ground voters who had previously supported Labour might stick with us because, after all, we were not going to be in a position to soak the rich, or the moderately well-off, anyway. If so, the calculations were wrong.
Even today, Labour is regularly convulsed by the moral and political dilemma of whether or not to offer higher taxes. Voters have never quite understood our angst. Meanwhile, the Scottish Conservatives were confidently casting themselves successfully in three roles: tough opponents of the SNP, staunch defenders of the union, and protectors of your pay packet.
The strategic failing of Scottish Labour’s tax rise promise was in failing to recognise that voters were not looking for a reason to vote Labour: they were looking for an excuse not to. In proposing unnecessary tax rises in order, mainly, to make us feel better about ourselves, we gave them that excuse.
The last time a UK party won an election on a manifesto promise to increase taxes was in the 1970s, nearer to the end of the second world war than to 2016. Promising to raise taxes is not just unpopular among our biggest target group – those in work and who aspire to a better life for themselves and their families – it is associated with failure. It is the kind of promise made by parties who do not expect to be in government after polling day.
In May, Scottish Labour fitted that description perfectly.
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Tom Harris is former member of parliament for Glasgow South. He tweets @MrTCHarris
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Jackie Baillie
When the Scottish parliament was first established in 1999 Holyrood’s powers allowed for different choices to be made from the United Kingdom government. The then Labour administration made those different choices on free personal care, on free concessionary travel and on university funding to name but three policy areas. From the very beginning there has always been scope for doing things differently. Now with the major new tax powers heading to Scotland the opportunity to take a different path from the Tory government is even greater than ever.
Faced with a Scottish National party budget for 2016-17 that passed on Tory cuts and slashed hundreds of millions of pounds from local services like schools, Labour argued we should use our new income tax powers. This was the moment that we could stop the Tory cuts and invest in the future of our country.
Respected economists tell us that the best way to grow the economy is to invest in its people. We cannot compete in a low wage, low skill economy. Cutting the education budget, when we have already seen cuts – 4,000 fewer teachers and 152,000 fewer college students – is not good for the economy.
The cuts to come in the next two financial years will be even worse than that experienced so far. So Labour went into the Scottish election pledging to raise the basic and higher rate of income tax by a penny, and asking the richest one per cent to pay their fair share through a 50p top rate of tax on earnings over £150,000 a year.
At a stroke this would have stopped the cuts and invested in education and consequently in the economy. Independent experts told us that Scottish GDP could increase by £2bn as a result of our proposals to invest in education.
I know people say that increasing taxes is not popular, yet in poll after poll our tax policies were supported by the overwhelming majority of the public. People just were not ready to put their trust in Labour. The problems in the Scottish Labour party did not happen overnight and they will not be solved overnight.
Our proposals for taxation were bold and radical. They gave us definition against the SNP and the Tories. It was telling that the Tories described the SNP’s tax policies as sensible. This also helped to frame the debate about the new powers coming to the parliament and how we choose to use them.
I well remember Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP first minister, travelling down to London during the general election to lecture UK political parties on how to be anti-austerity. How strange it is that, now she has the power to stop the cuts, she seems content to implement Tory austerity.
Our tax policies are right for the times we face. They will frame how we hold the SNP to account. The SNP is now a minority government and faces a major choice – it can work with centre-left parties like Labour or they can work with the Tories.
In the long term, the objective must be to grow the economy so we can generate more revenue to fund the best quality public services. But you do not grow the economy by cutting education. You need to invest in people, in their skills, because in so doing you invest in the future.
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Jackie Baillie is member of the Scottish parliament for Dumbarton
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