A Google search for "George Galloway demagogue" yields nearly fifty thousand hits (probably, after today, more) which is hardly surprising. Demagogue is generally the term of abuse hurled at politicians in lieu of more openly mocking the people who vote for them.
Sordel is, as regular reader of these pages will know, thoroughly disaffected with the democratic system of government, but it has its moments, and last night's ringing endorsement of Galloway by the electors of Bradford West was one of them. Rather than celebrate this vindication of a system that most people regard as an unequivocal good thing, however, many commentators will conclude that Galloway was elected because most of the people voting were too stupid or gullible to recognise a scoundrel when he stood before them demanding their voices. Unable to say this openly, for fear that their implicitly racist position will be seen for what it is, they use the word demagogue.
Labour Blogger Mark Ferguson nicely epitomises this view: "Voter ID and anti-Tory campaigning was, on this occasion, insufficient up against the onslaught of demagoguery."
The Times today - covering the event as though it were a massive electoral upset and smack in the face for Ed Miliband - gave a brief summary of Galloway's career taking in, as highlights, his deselection as a Labour MP in 1988 for admitting to sexual carryings-on while in Greece (surely the most bizarre career-threatening scandal ever); his support for Saddam Hussein; his expulsion from the Labour Party for opposing the war in Iraq; his defeat in the Poplar & Limehouse constituency in 2010; and, his subsequent failure to win a seat in the Scottish Parliament. "His credibility as a serious political figure appeared to have been finished by his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, where he was shown pretending to lap milk like a cat from the hands of the actress Rula Lenska."
The Times's account at no point suggests that the voters would have had a good reason to vote for Galloway; nor does it provide any analysis of the background to a victory in which Galloway got more than twice the votes cast for his Labour opponent and 60% of the overall vote.
So, let's do it for them. (I have laboured for several minutes on Wikipedia to bring you this special report.)
The Bradford West election was precipitated by the fact that the previous MP, Marsha Singh, stepped down through ill health. The Labour candidate was Imran Hussein, a former Labour councillor, who announced that he would not attend hustings with other candidates. (Not that Sordel would like to do battle with Galloway, but it's hardly the act of a political lion to run away.) Galloway's campaign was run by the defecting Labour campaign manager who had previously overseen Marsha Singh's victory.
All was clearly not well in the Labour camp.
Having inherited the Labour political machine, Galloway was in a strong position to mobilise popular sentiment. When his campaign manager was helping Labour, this was doubtless called "mustering grass-roots support", but now that he was helping RESPECT it became the "onslaught of demagoguery".
RESPECT has had a troubled few years due to a split between the Galloway faction and the Socialist Workers Party faction within what is a fairly small political organisation. Nevertheless, the core of its policies are focused on social values that might reasonably resonate with any voter: the rights of refugees and immigrants; redistributive taxation; an increase in the minimum wage; and implacable opposition to military adventuring.
On the face of it, then, Bradford voters would be making a rational and broadly self-interested decision to elect George Galloway as their MP. Regarding them as having been hoodwinked is an understandable slur on Galloway himself by his political opponents, but a revealing glimpse of their true estimation of the value of "democracy".
Friday, March 30, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Dining With The Tax-Collectors
One of the things that her Majesty's Government has recently been banging on about is what a terrible thing it is to avoid tax "aggressively".
(I'm not sure how much aggression goes into that, to be honest: most individuals with high net worth would delegate the job of cutting tax payments to their accountants, who are not typically of the attack-dog demeanour. Perhaps Mr. Osborne should be more worried about people avoiding tax ploddingly.)
Be that as it may, the cry of the Coalition has gone out that evading tax is morally wrong.
But are they right?
The usual citation from Revealed Theology on this one is Christ's admonition - when asked if the Jews should continue to pay tax to their Roman occupiers - to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". The point of this story is that His political adversaries were trying to whip up some trouble and had set this question as a trap, which He nimbly sidestepped. The answer, then, was really a nice piece of verbal sleight-of-hand.
In any case, very few people today look to revelation for their moral attitudes (what with all the stoning and eye-putting-out 'n' all) so the more usual question is whether there is a rational reason for thinking that evading tax is ethically a bad thing.
If one considers tax to be a form of charity or wealth distribution (a way to fund healthcare and social security for those less fortunate than those with taxable income) then I suppose one can argue that taxation serves a socially benign purpose. There is no logical reason, however, why someone who dodges taxation may not contribute to charity at least as much money as they withhold through avoiding tax. Charity may have a definite moral character that paying tax does not, since it is voluntary.
Moreover, not all taxation has a socially beneficial function. There is theOffence Defence Budget for a start. And before you complain that were everyone to withhold tax revenue then we could not nationally benefit all citizens such as the military, police and fire services: the responsibility for funding these services has an equal benefit to all, yet all citizens capable of paying for them do not contribute equally. The redistributive function of taxation and the social contract element should not be confused.
People who avoid taxation tend to top-slice their payments: they still pay at least as much as is required for essential services and often tens of thousands of pounds more.
Tax avoidance is generally intended to mitigate disadvantageously high tax regimes, and the people best placed to use it are the ones who have such wealth that they can pretty much afford to switch tax regime at will. Try sheltering your assets when you have no assets to shelter. The ultimate sanction of those wishing to avoid tax is therefore to emigrate, at which point we lose not only income tax, but also the many other sources of taxation to which the rich, and the rest of us, are usually subject. Such as V.A.T. on purchases.
The wealthy live under no moral or ethical obligation to pay tax. The politicians and media who - with increasing frequency - treat as wrongdoers those who take practical steps to husband their resources are, on the other hand, venturing onto very perilous moral & practical grounds.
(I'm not sure how much aggression goes into that, to be honest: most individuals with high net worth would delegate the job of cutting tax payments to their accountants, who are not typically of the attack-dog demeanour. Perhaps Mr. Osborne should be more worried about people avoiding tax ploddingly.)
Be that as it may, the cry of the Coalition has gone out that evading tax is morally wrong.
But are they right?
The usual citation from Revealed Theology on this one is Christ's admonition - when asked if the Jews should continue to pay tax to their Roman occupiers - to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". The point of this story is that His political adversaries were trying to whip up some trouble and had set this question as a trap, which He nimbly sidestepped. The answer, then, was really a nice piece of verbal sleight-of-hand.
In any case, very few people today look to revelation for their moral attitudes (what with all the stoning and eye-putting-out 'n' all) so the more usual question is whether there is a rational reason for thinking that evading tax is ethically a bad thing.
If one considers tax to be a form of charity or wealth distribution (a way to fund healthcare and social security for those less fortunate than those with taxable income) then I suppose one can argue that taxation serves a socially benign purpose. There is no logical reason, however, why someone who dodges taxation may not contribute to charity at least as much money as they withhold through avoiding tax. Charity may have a definite moral character that paying tax does not, since it is voluntary.
Moreover, not all taxation has a socially beneficial function. There is the
People who avoid taxation tend to top-slice their payments: they still pay at least as much as is required for essential services and often tens of thousands of pounds more.
Tax avoidance is generally intended to mitigate disadvantageously high tax regimes, and the people best placed to use it are the ones who have such wealth that they can pretty much afford to switch tax regime at will. Try sheltering your assets when you have no assets to shelter. The ultimate sanction of those wishing to avoid tax is therefore to emigrate, at which point we lose not only income tax, but also the many other sources of taxation to which the rich, and the rest of us, are usually subject. Such as V.A.T. on purchases.
The wealthy live under no moral or ethical obligation to pay tax. The politicians and media who - with increasing frequency - treat as wrongdoers those who take practical steps to husband their resources are, on the other hand, venturing onto very perilous moral & practical grounds.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
From Eton To Cheatin'?
Had Sordel started cracking this particular nutshell little over a week ago then its kernel might well have been the resilience and avuncular charm of David Cameron. Obviously one distrusts anyone who rises far in British Politics, since one cannot be a Snake Charmer without (at the very least) having more access to venomous serpents than is decent or proper in any human being. Nevertheless, Cameron has an air of broad decency that is difficult to gainsay.
If Cameron has a type, it is surely that of the young housemaster: unfailingly smooth with parents and boys, capable of the winning joke but also with just enough steel to suggest that one wouldn't want to be carpeted by him for smoking in the dorm. He gives the impression of being utterly fair-minded, though his dealings with Miliband Minor also have the sort of cheerful brutality that might send a fat boy on an impromptu cross-country run.
Quite how the nickname "Flashman" has attached itself to Cameron is hard to say, since he is very much more the type to have handed Flashman his prefect's badge.
Except that now he faces the dual accusation of swiping Granny's gin-money and pocketing a sizeable series of donations to the Conservative Party in return for an invitation for to dinner.
Where did it all go so wrong?
Part of the problem, of course, is that Cameron (being fair-minded himself) doesn't expect others to be such colossal bounders. Such is his innocence that he honestly believes that decreasing the highest taxation rate from 50% to 45% will encourage those previously evading tax to pay it. It would never occur to him that this is akin to a shop's offering reduced prices in an effort to appease shoplifters.
Another thing that Cameron's straight bat will not block is the politician who wants to spin a broadly neutral tax measure as a swinging tax increase for the elderly and infirm. Only the Conservative Party at its most ingenuous can believe that it would be given the benefit of the doubt when cutting pensioners' tax allowances, but ingenuousness is Cameron's stock in trade. One might call it his Achilles' Heel were he not so clearly more of the Hector stamp.
And finally, it would never occur to Cameron that there was anything in the least improper about opening up pot luck chez David & Samantha to wealthy business interests. These are just the sort of fellows that he's been dining with all his life, after all, and what greater evidence of personal integrity than kicking in a couple of hundred thousand to the club funds?
The problem is not so much that he might be cheating himself, then, as that he might be cheerfully oblivious to the illicit still in the prefects' common room.
A gentlemanly bearing is all very well & good ... so long as one is only required to deal with gentlemen. But when, as a politician, can you count on doing that?
If Cameron has a type, it is surely that of the young housemaster: unfailingly smooth with parents and boys, capable of the winning joke but also with just enough steel to suggest that one wouldn't want to be carpeted by him for smoking in the dorm. He gives the impression of being utterly fair-minded, though his dealings with Miliband Minor also have the sort of cheerful brutality that might send a fat boy on an impromptu cross-country run.
Quite how the nickname "Flashman" has attached itself to Cameron is hard to say, since he is very much more the type to have handed Flashman his prefect's badge.
Except that now he faces the dual accusation of swiping Granny's gin-money and pocketing a sizeable series of donations to the Conservative Party in return for an invitation for to dinner.
Where did it all go so wrong?
Part of the problem, of course, is that Cameron (being fair-minded himself) doesn't expect others to be such colossal bounders. Such is his innocence that he honestly believes that decreasing the highest taxation rate from 50% to 45% will encourage those previously evading tax to pay it. It would never occur to him that this is akin to a shop's offering reduced prices in an effort to appease shoplifters.
Another thing that Cameron's straight bat will not block is the politician who wants to spin a broadly neutral tax measure as a swinging tax increase for the elderly and infirm. Only the Conservative Party at its most ingenuous can believe that it would be given the benefit of the doubt when cutting pensioners' tax allowances, but ingenuousness is Cameron's stock in trade. One might call it his Achilles' Heel were he not so clearly more of the Hector stamp.
And finally, it would never occur to Cameron that there was anything in the least improper about opening up pot luck chez David & Samantha to wealthy business interests. These are just the sort of fellows that he's been dining with all his life, after all, and what greater evidence of personal integrity than kicking in a couple of hundred thousand to the club funds?
The problem is not so much that he might be cheating himself, then, as that he might be cheerfully oblivious to the illicit still in the prefects' common room.
A gentlemanly bearing is all very well & good ... so long as one is only required to deal with gentlemen. But when, as a politician, can you count on doing that?
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