Posts tagged "Ed Miliband"

Ed Miliband: a googly for tax avoiders | Editorial

Labour – a party that pussyfooted around with avoidance for 13 years – needs to convince the country it will do better next time

In his own mind, Ed Miliband is pretty clear about how he would like to distinguish the Labour party he leads from the Labour party that went before. He aims to be readier than Blair and Brown to challenge the powerful in general, and the economically mighty in particular.

Over three years, we’ve seen flashes of both halves of that – in, for example, his determination to take Wapping to task over phone hacking, and in his conference speech on predatory capitalism, which initially left pundits scratching their heads, but looked smarter as the months rolled by.

What he has not yet succeeded in doing, however, as his personal poll ratings remorselessly demonstrate, is get this mission across to the country at large, still less generate much enthusiasm. Save perhaps for down the Red Lion on Parliament Street, the rhetoric of “responsible capitalism” is not the language of the pub.

However worthy specific policy ideas – such as using procurement to encourage training, and overhauling reporting rules for listed firms – it is tough to persuade the experts that these things can achieve anything much from the opposition benches, and tougher to persuade voters to do anything but yawn.

The great PR problem with the agenda has been the absence of real-life predators to point to – demons to bring the story to life. A wave of fury over tax avoidance should transform the possibilities; voters who sweat for pay they cannot divert to Luxembourg or Bermuda rage at the antics of the Amazons and Googles who thrive upon their custom.

While Nick Clegg and David Cameron are also manoeuvring to make anti-avoidance their own, the coalition is beset by infighting, and Mr Miliband spots an open goal. He struck at it on Wednesday, by adding aggressive words about Google’s aggressive tax practices into a long-planned speech at the firm’s Big Tent.

The pointed naming and shaming of its absent boss soon provoked a response from Eric Schmidt himself, redoubling the handy publicity.

The remaining question, however, is whether Labour – a party that pussyfooted around with avoidance for 13 years – can convince the country it will do better next time. That will have to involve hard and specific commitments to act.

Mr Miliband is making the right noises, talking up comprehensive country-by-country reporting of corporate finances, and also signalling a willingness to act unilaterally if the PM’s vaunted efforts at the G8 do not succeed.

Sadly, Ed Balls’s policy papers remain overly cautious on the smallprint, replete with talk of “intelligent transparency”, which can surely only be something more slippery than transparency plain and simple.

The endless questions on a tax return are tiresome, but – Labour take note – in the end the thing to do is declare on every detail.

Ed Miliband criticises Google over tax avoidance – video

Labour’s leader, Ed Miliband, says Google’s Eric Schmidt was wrong to argue that the company’s controversial tax system was ‘just capitalism’

Ed Miliband vows to curb corporate tax avoidance

Labour leader urges David Cameron to work with G8 countries to force corporate giants to pay their fair share

Ed Miliband has vowed to rip up the rule book as prime minister and go it alone if there is no international consensus to tackle multinationals engaging in massive tax avoidance.

In an interview with the Observer, the Labour leader urged David Cameron to find agreement at the G8 summit of leaders next month around an ambitious agenda forcing corporate giants to pay their fair share.

He said that, if Cameron fails, he himself as prime minister would unilaterally act to make multinationals operating in the UK more transparent about the money they make here, the movement of cash around their corporate structures, and the justifications for the tax they pay.

He would also increase the resources of HM Revenue and Customs to strike at tax cheats.

Miliband, who will speak at a Google event in Hertfordshire on Wednesday, said he believed some multinationals, including the internet giant, were not living up to their responsibilities to society. Google was accused by MPs last week of being devious, calculating and unethical after it emerged that it paid just £3.4m in tax on £3.2bn of sales taken from UK customers last year as the sales were technically “closed” in low-tax Ireland.

Miliband said: “Now, what is the politicians’ responsibility: change the law. But it is also to talk about the kind of society we want to create and what the responsibilities of a company like Google are. I don’t think they are living up to their responsibilities at the moment, and I will be very clear about that on Wednesday.

“It is part of a culture of irresponsibility. If everyone approaches their tax affairs as some of these companies have approached their tax affairs we wouldn’t have a health service, we wouldn’t have an education system. And actually the point I will make at Google is that will undermine Google.”

Meanwhile Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, writing in the Observer, has given his first reaction to last week’s criticism of his company by MPs on the public accounts committee. He says tax avoidance is rightly a “hot topic” in difficult economic times and urges genuine reform, but adds: “Politicians – not companies – set the rules.”

But, in a major policy announcement, Miliband says a Labour government would engender a more responsible capitalism in the UK by changing those rules with or without international agreement. Miliband would:

? Pursue a new global system where multinationals must publish their revenues, profits and other key corporate information useful to revenue authorities in each country in which they operate.

? Force multinationals to publish such information in the UK even if international agreement cannot be found on the issue, as they do in Denmark.

? Make it a legal requirement for multinationals operating in the UK to disclose details of any tax avoidance schemes they are using globally.

? Seek reforms to “transfer pricing” rules to stop companies from shuffling money to other parts of their firm based in tax havens in return for spurious services.

? Open up the ownership of companies sited in Britain’s tax havens to the UK revenue authorities, but also seek to allow developing countries access to such information.

Miliband said the government was “dragging its feet” on the issue of tax avoidance. “They have got to act. If they don’t act, we will act in government. This is an absolutely massive and serious issue.

“I think it is a pro-business agenda to say that people should pay their fair share at the top. The head of a big British retailer came to me recently who was outraged by some of the things going on. He was saying he pays his taxes. The business world feels strongly about this.

“This has an impact on people in their daily lives. The less the big companies pay their fair share of tax, the higher tax others will have to pay, the worse the services they will receive.”

Prime minister’s questions: 15 May 2013 – audio

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg takes questions from Labour’s Harriet Harman and other MPs on the proposals for an EU referendum at the weekly event in the House of Commons. David Cameron and Ed Miliband were absent

Ed Miliband accuses Google of avoiding fair share of tax – video

Ed Miliband criticises Google’s tax affairs in the UK as the company’s vice-president appears before the Commons public accounts committee on Thursday

Ed Miliband must work to change voters’ minds on poverty | Ellie Mae O’Hagan

Labour supporters have hardened their attitude towards social justice because Labour did. Miliband must reverse this

It’s Wednesday, so you know what that means: it’s time for the Labour party to have its weekly identity crisis. This week’s crisis is brought to you by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which has released a report showing that attitudes of the British public towards poverty have hardened – and the most marked shift has been among Labour voters. These days only 27% of Labour supporters cite social injustice as the main cause of poverty, down from 41% in 1986. Conversely, Labour supporters identifying laziness and lack of willpower as the main cause of poverty rose from 13% to 22% in the same period.

It’s little wonder that the story has generated headlines. The UK’s leading leftwing party (as the Guardian dubiously calls it) seeing its supporters adopt alarmingly rightwing positions is indeed rather incongruous. But allow me to suggest for a moment that this news isn’t surprising at all. In fact, I’d say it would be more surprising if this shift in attitude hadn’t happened.

For a start, we wouldn’t expect Tory voters to suddenly harden their attitudes towards people living in poverty, because presumably their attitudes were pretty hard to begin with. The party that coined the phrase “on your bike” and invented the “strivers v skivers” narrative must surely be supported by people who already believe poverty is caused by laziness and lack of willpower. I think it’s fair to say people haven’t been voting Conservative all these years because they’re hoping the government will pay out more jobseekers’ allowance or give council houses to more immigrants. So the only significant shift in attitudes on poverty we could realistically expect would come from Labour party supporters, who didn’t hold these opinions in the first place.

More importantly though, unity of public opinion is what happens when political parties develop a consensus around a certain issue. People generally agree that benefit claimants are responsible for their own poverty because in the past 30 years, Labour has generally agreed with the Tories on that too. In 2010 Zoe Williams quoted John Curtice of the British Social Attitudes survey on this very subject: “In repositioning itself ideologically, New Labour has helped ensure that British public opinion now has a more conservative character.” And in 2013, Liam Byrne tried to be clever by labelling a benefits squeeze a “strivers’ tax”, and in doing so, demonstrated just how willing he was to adopt the “strivers vs skivers” premise.

As a result, perhaps some of those surveyed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who would have at one time classed themselves as Labour supporters, have been repelled by the party’s decidedly un-leftwing behaviour. In the 2005 elections, the BBC found that the party’s support among working-class voters and council tenants dropped sharply. Could it be that Labour party supporters aren’t becoming more rightwing, but that it is being deserted by those who might offer an alternative view?

After Labour’s identity crisis comes the inevitable speculation about how Ed Miliband should respond. It seems to me he has very little choice in the matter. He can’t promise to get tough on benefits because that’s prime Tory territory, and attempting to out-Tory the Tories will only end in failure. He can’t occupy the middle ground (the political term given to “trying to second guess what the electorate think and then saying that”) because the middle ground on this issue, as we’ve established, is basically Conservative.

Ed Miliband must be brave enough to fight this narrative, not just for tactical reasons, but because what’s the point of the Labour party if it won’t defend ordinary people? Ultimately this narrative must be opposed because it is an abhorrent one. Miliband can do it – he just needs to remember that public opinions can be changed. This data shows that Tony Blair’s Labour party changed its supporters’ minds about poverty. Now Ed Miliband’s Labour party must change them back.

Ed Miliband: Labour councillors ‘can make a difference’ – video

The Labour leader says upcoming local elections are a chance to show that Labour can make changes ‘even in tough times’

Ed Miliband will fail if he locks himself into Tory austerity | Seumas Milne

Falling living standards make Labour favourite to win the next election. It needs policies to match the scale of the crisis

Without an early economic turnaround or a Labour implosion, Ed Miliband is likely to be the next prime minister. Nick Clegg’s announcement this week that he would be ready to serve in a Miliband-led government is a sure sign David Cameron’s coalition buddies have come to the same conclusion.

For all the talk about the softness of Labour’s eight-point poll lead and the public’s lack of enthusiasm for its leader, the underlying reasons aren’t hard to find. Whether or not growth picks up from the current IMF forecast of 0.7% for the year, real wages and living standards have long been the key to British elections.

No governing party has won an election on the back of falling real wages since the 1970s, as Labour found to its cost in 1979 and 2010. And no party has lost office when real wages for the majority were rising, with the single exception of John Major’s defeat in 1997 – though that followed the humiliation of Black Wednesday and 18 Tory years in power. On current projections, average real wages will have fallen a drastic 10% by the end of this parliament.

Of course it’s perfectly possible that a pre-election uptick, Labour mistakes and the burden of its record, or public pessimism that any government can turn the economy round could change that calculus. But, as elsewhere in crisis-ridden Europe, the scale of the coalition’s economic failure and fall in voters’ living standards clearly favours the opposition.

Which is why the heat has now been turned up on the Labour leader, inside and outside his party. The stakes are far higher now a Miliband-led government no longer looks a remote possibility. It started with Tony Blair and a gaggle of New Labour grandees.

Miliband must not “tack left on tax and spending”, they declared, but instead cleave to the tried and tested formulas of the 1990s. Meanwhile, anonymous “senior Labour figures” complained that Miliband was soft on welfare claimants and that union-backed candidates were being picked for next year’s European elections.

The Labour leader politely rebuffed his predecessor, saying the party had to change and “learn from its mistakes”. But when Len McCluskey – leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unite, and fresh from re-election with 144,000 votes – warned Miliband he would go down to defeat if he allowed himself to be “seduced” by Blairites and opted for “austerity-lite”, the Labour leader’s response was ferocious.

McCluskey’s comments were “represensible” and “disloyal”, Miliband said. That was followed by another panicky denunciation of the leftwing Respect MP George Galloway as “awful” after it emerged the two had met privately – and of union speculation about a European-style general strike against cuts as a “terrible idea”.

It’s scarcely surprising that the Labour leader tiptoes round his Blairite critics, backed as they are by the media and corporate establishment, and lashes out at leaders of Labour-affiliated unions, ludicrously portrayed as puppet masters. And McCluskey unwisely named the shadow cabinet’s Blairite seducers, which will make it more difficult for Miliband to move them in any future reshuffle.

But McCluskey is very far from alone in fearing Labour risks being too timid in the face of a historic crisis – and failing to offer a credible alternative to voters now taking the full brunt of its impact.

As the GMB union leader Paul Kenny puts it: “New Labour won’t win again. They need to drop any suggestion that all we’ll do is cut a bit slower than the Tories. It’s all about jobs and spending power.” And Labour’s backbench revolt in March over benefit sanctions on unemployed people refusing private “workfare” schemes shows that kind of concern is well represented among the party’s MPs as well.

Labour leaders’ sensitivity over a rupture with Tory austerity was on display this week when Miliband tried to avoid saying his plans for a VAT cut would initially be paid for by increased borrowing. That was later corrected. But it was a foretaste of the pitfalls around the far more important decision over Labour’s cuts and spending plans after 2015. The crunch will come over whether – and how far – Labour is prepared to break with the coalition’s austerity programme for the next parliament, when cuts are planned to be the most savage. The Tories want to lure Labour into signing up for the same medicine – or a mildly watered down variant – as they did in the far more benign economic environment of 1997.

If Miliband and Ed Balls (who still defends the 1997 decision to stick to Tory spending limits) fall into that trap, it would be a disaster – both for Labour’s election prospects and the chances of rebuilding an economy that delivers for the heavily squeezed majority. Balls recently slapped down a suggestion that Labour would outspend the Tories, saying the decision would be taken nearer the election.

But the principle of whether Labour should tie itself to the coalition’s overall spending plan, rather than the detailed figures, clearly shouldn’t be left to a handful of the party’s leaders in the febrile runup to a general election. If Labour is going to have any chance of driving economic recovery after 2015, it cannot allow itself to be locked into a failed Tory austerity programme.

Miliband is right to argue that there has to be a break with the failed “free market” economic model of the past 30 years. But unless that rhetoric is turned into policies that match the scale of the crisis, both before and after the election, it risks laying the ground for political failure. Pressure needs to be applied now by those who want to see real change.

Twitter: @SeumasMilne

Ed Miliband will fail if he locks himself into Tory austerity | Seumas Milne

Falling living standards make Labour favourite to win the next election. It needs policies to match the scale of the crisis

Without an early economic turnaround or a Labour implosion, Ed Miliband is likely to be the next prime minister. Nick Clegg’s announcement this week that he would be ready to serve in a Miliband-led government is a sure sign David Cameron’s coalition buddies have come to the same conclusion.

For all the talk about the softness of Labour’s eight-point poll lead and the public’s lack of enthusiasm for its leader, the underlying reasons aren’t hard to find. Whether or not growth picks up from the current IMF forecast of 0.7% for the year, real wages and living standards have long been the key to British elections.

No governing party has won an election on the back of falling real wages since the 1970s, as Labour found to its cost in 1979 and 2010. And no party has lost office when real wages for the majority were rising, with the single exception of John Major’s defeat in 1997 – though that followed the humiliation of Black Wednesday and 18 Tory years in power. On current projections, average real wages will have fallen a drastic 10% by the end of this parliament.

Of course it’s perfectly possible that a pre-election uptick, Labour mistakes and the burden of its record, or public pessimism that any government can turn the economy round could change that calculus. But, as elsewhere in crisis-ridden Europe, the scale of the coalition’s economic failure and fall in voters’ living standards clearly favours the opposition.

Which is why the heat has now been turned up on the Labour leader, inside and outside his party. The stakes are far higher now a Miliband-led government no longer looks a remote possibility. It started with Tony Blair and a gaggle of New Labour grandees.

Miliband must not “tack left on tax and spending”, they declared, but instead cleave to the tried and tested formulas of the 1990s. Meanwhile, anonymous “senior Labour figures” complained that Miliband was soft on welfare claimants and that union-backed candidates were being picked for next year’s European elections.

The Labour leader politely rebuffed his predecessor, saying the party had to change and “learn from its mistakes”. But when Len McCluskey – leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unite, and fresh from re-election with 144,000 votes – warned Miliband he would go down to defeat if he allowed himself to be “seduced” by Blairites and opted for “austerity-lite”, the Labour leader’s response was ferocious.

McCluskey’s comments were “represensible” and “disloyal”, Miliband said. That was followed by another panicky denunciation of the leftwing Respect MP George Galloway as “awful” after it emerged the two had met privately – and of union speculation about a European-style general strike against cuts as a “terrible idea”.

It’s scarcely surprising that the Labour leader tiptoes round his Blairite critics, backed as they are by the media and corporate establishment, and lashes out at leaders of Labour-affiliated unions, ludicrously portrayed as puppet masters. And McCluskey unwisely named the shadow cabinet’s Blairite seducers, which will make it more difficult for Miliband to move them in any future reshuffle.

But McCluskey is very far from alone in fearing Labour risks being too timid in the face of a historic crisis – and failing to offer a credible alternative to voters now taking the full brunt of its impact.

As the GMB union leader Paul Kenny puts it: “New Labour won’t win again. They need to drop any suggestion that all we’ll do is cut a bit slower than the Tories. It’s all about jobs and spending power.” And Labour’s backbench revolt in March over benefit sanctions on unemployed people refusing private “workfare” schemes shows that kind of concern is well represented among the party’s MPs as well.

Labour leaders’ sensitivity over a rupture with Tory austerity was on display this week when Miliband tried to avoid saying his plans for a VAT cut would initially be paid for by increased borrowing. That was later corrected. But it was a foretaste of the pitfalls around the far more important decision over Labour’s cuts and spending plans after 2015. The crunch will come over whether – and how far – Labour is prepared to break with the coalition’s austerity programme for the next parliament, when cuts are planned to be the most savage. The Tories want to lure Labour into signing up for the same medicine – or a mildly watered down variant – as they did in the far more benign economic environment of 1997.

If Miliband and Ed Balls (who still defends the 1997 decision to stick to Tory spending limits) fall into that trap, it would be a disaster – both for Labour’s election prospects and the chances of rebuilding an economy that delivers for the heavily squeezed majority. Balls recently slapped down a suggestion that Labour would outspend the Tories, saying the decision would be taken nearer the election.

But the principle of whether Labour should tie itself to the coalition’s overall spending plan, rather than the detailed figures, clearly shouldn’t be left to a handful of the party’s leaders in the febrile runup to a general election. If Labour is going to have any chance of driving economic recovery after 2015, it cannot allow itself to be locked into a failed Tory austerity programme.

Miliband is right to argue that there has to be a break with the failed “free market” economic model of the past 30 years. But unless that rhetoric is turned into policies that match the scale of the crisis, both before and after the election, it risks laying the ground for political failure. Pressure needs to be applied now by those who want to see real change.

Twitter: @SeumasMilne

Ed Miliband climbs on to his pallet to take politics to the people

The Labour leader may not be on the traditional soapbox, but his humbler prop is a useful way of reaching the voters

Cheer up, Ed Miliband, it won’t be the bare wooden pallet you spoke from during your local election tour this week that may do you long-term harm. Some reporters have mocked the pallet, but what do they know? The reptiles also mocked John Major’s use of a soapbox during the 1992 election campaign. It was the poll they all said he’d lose. He didn’t.

No, what may have damaged Miliband more was his widely abused refusal (at least eight times) to confirm the blindingly obvious to Radio 4′s Martha Kearney, namely that a Miliband-led government that wants Britain to grow its way out of debt will have to front-load the project with a bit more borrowing. It is no longer risky to admit this now that the “paradox of thrift” is slowly bankrupting even Germany. The Labour leader has since owned up.

The link between pallets and on-air dithering is a real one. In an age of market-tested, made-for-TV politics, cautiously managerial and technocratic, voters long for authenticity, real or bogus. As the Americans like to say: “If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.” That is why Margaret the Warrior’s death evoked such nostalgia, why Norman Tebbit remains the voice of the saloon bar and even Ukip’s Nigel Farage can do a good imitation.

Those lacking such thespian skills search for props, pallets or people. Though the sensitive soul doesn’t mention it in his memoirs, Major’s soapbox worked for him. Harold Macmillan used exotic fur hats, Harold Wilson his trademark Gannex raincoat and pipe. Relighting the pipe gave him time to think on TV, though he was a cigar man in private.

As the thespian shine wore off Tony Blair, he resorted to his “masochism strategy” in the search for authenticity: being filmed for TV news while nurses or cancer victims abused him roundly. Miliband’s deft handling of an unemployed heckler (accusing him and his audience of being “full of shit”) during his unmediated Q&A in Lancashire reflects a similar search for real, spontaneous emotion that connects leader with voter.

Obviously, Miliband couldn’t borrow Major’s soapbox; a pallet is shorter, scruffier and more American. But even a tall man benefits from more height and he seems to have attracted crowds of 200. Not bad in disaffected 2013. But if pollsters tell a leader he is seen as nerdy, metropolitan or out of touch, he/she needs to do more. There is a case for humorous, impromptu platforms – flatbed trucks are good; tanks better. And few forget George Bush with bullhorn and firefighter at the 9/11 site or Germany’s Willie Brandt, falling to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto. Brilliant theatre; also authentic, and probably spontaneous.

Like Blair and David Cameron, Miliband routinely does shirt-sleeves, occasionally makes unscripted (well-rehearsed?) speeches and jokes. Being tactile is good, real anger is good, so is likability, which divisive figures such as Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Hugo Chávez had, as did Mandela the unifier. Alas, it’s hard to fake.