 beginning to recognise all of this. David Cameron was right when he became Conservative Party leader to repudiate the Thatcherite legacy of permanent growth and instead talk about quality of life and human happiness. Moreover if the Tories don't question the overwhelming power of the state, then Labour's tax and surveillance society will continue to police British society out of existence.
But the missing middle of the conservatives' philosophy has always been an inability to question the free market - they have never really understood how modern capitalism has helped to create Britain's broken society.
But all that changed at this week's party conference, when the Conservatives decided to tackle the scandal of non-domicile residents who live in Britain but claim a tax-free status on the basis of off-shoring their income. Better still, part of the £25,000 flat-rate charge the Tories plan to levy on these super-rich will go towards freeing first-time house-buyers from paying stamp duty.
This then represents a genuinely |
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progressive conservatism - extending wealth by taking from the asset rich and giving it to the asset poor. It represents a real alternative to Labour's tax haven culture for the off-shore aristocracy.
Conservatives should, however, go further and lighten the heavy taxes imposed on wage-earners by ending the disgrace of British sponsored off-shore tax-havens and the huge losses they create for the public purse. Tax Justice Network estimate that some $11.5 trillion is held in offshore tax havens by wealthy individuals - a tax loss each and every year of around $225bn.
If conservatives tackle monopoly capitalism and start talking about distributing assets and wealth to everybody then we really might have the beginning of a people's capitalism and a decent society. In the context of the coming General Election, this might open up clear blue water between a Labour party that promises prosperity but only delivers debt and dependence and a Conservative party that seeks to free people from being slaves of the state and the super rich.
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 4, 2007
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London will always attract tax exiles
Arguments for and against inheritance tax
