“If you’re from an ordinary working-class family, life is just much harder than many people in politics realise. You have a job, but you don’t always have job security. You have your own home, but you worry about mortgage rates going up. You can just about manage, but you worry about the cost of living and the quality of the local school.
“Frankly, not everybody in Westminster understands what it’s like to live like this, and some need to be told that what the government does isn’t a game. It’s a serious business that has real consequences for people’s lives.”
CCHQ Press — We can make Britain a country that works for...
As it was clear at the time that these issues had to be addressed:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and looking beyond revolt: "If we’ve learned one thing in the last week, it is that communities – not Westminster - must agree what works for them."
Futures Forum: Brexit: and democracy: "Ordinary voters never took much interest. Perhaps they didn’t care whether they were ruled by a faraway elite in Brussels or ditto in Westminster."
As written by Alan Milburn in the Telegraph at the time:
Brexit must lead us to build a fairer Britain
ALAN MILBURN
1 AUGUST 2016
They should have the same chance to succeed, regardless of who their parents are CREDIT: REX
The EU referendum exposed deep divides in our nation that go well beyond Europe. Public concern – even anger – about issues of identity, immigration and inequality found a voice, and a target. The commission I chair has been warning for years that without a dramatic change in approach to how we tackle issues of poverty and mobility, Britain would become a divided nation.
On June 23, those chickens came home to roost. Of the 65 parts of the country we identified as being social mobility “coldspots” – those with the worst education and employment prospects – only three areas voted to Remain. Of course the new government will focus on Brexit, but in doing so there is a risk it gives insufficient priority to addressing the referendum’s social aftermath.
The EU referendum exposed deep divides in our nation that go well beyond Europe. Public concern – even anger – about issues of identity, immigration and inequality found a voice, and a target. The commission I chair has been warning for years that without a dramatic change in approach to how we tackle issues of poverty and mobility, Britain would become a divided nation.
On June 23, those chickens came home to roost. Of the 65 parts of the country we identified as being social mobility “coldspots” – those with the worst education and employment prospects – only three areas voted to Remain. Of course the new government will focus on Brexit, but in doing so there is a risk it gives insufficient priority to addressing the referendum’s social aftermath.
Brexit must lead us to build a fairer Britain - Telegraph
Futures Forum: Brexit: and a fairer Britain
Two years later and earlier this week, it was noted how the government has dropped these promises - by the Guardian:
When she first came to power Theresa May promised to address Britain’s “burning injustices”.
A few weeks ago, MPs were asked to quietly drop the phrase.
Tied up in the complications of Brexit, the government has done very little to help the poor and disadvantaged – those who voted in protest against their own circumstances in the referendum.
Neglecting this group has not helped past governments, and this one seems to be making the same mistake...
The Tories’ housing plans will solve nothing – we need to build more | Martha Gill | Opinion | The Guardian
Futures Forum: A solution to our housing problems: build social housing
And by the Times:
Tory party orders MPs to ditch rhetoric on burning injustices
Matt Chorley, Red Box Editor
July 31 2018, The Times
Theresa May is on holiday with her husband, Philip, in northern ItalyPIER MARCO TACCA/REUTERS
Theresa May’s rhetoric about “burning injustices” has been quietly dropped by the Conservatives after being told that it risked boosting support for Labour.
Two years ago Mrs May used her first speech as prime minister on the steps of Downing Street to vow to tackle the injustices which meant that the poor, working class, state educated and women struggled to get on in life.
However, the language is understood to have been ditched, with Tory MPs discouraged from using it in their campaign leaflets after internal party polling suggested that Mrs May was not trusted to fulfil the promises. Instead Labour was winning “hands down” on dealing with issues such as poverty, housing and discrimination, Tory insiders indicated...
Tory party orders MPs to ditch rhetoric on burning injustices | News | The Times
Meanwhile, others who voted for Brexit are pushing for a very different scenario of low tax - which the US is keen on:
The Beauty of Tax Competition: Will US Cuts Prompt Other Countries to Follow Suit? - Foundation for Economic Education
But the EU is not:
The Anti Tax Avoidance Directive - European Commission
I've seen how the EU tackles tax evasion versus the US – and if Brexit Britain follows Trump, we're headed for disaster | The Independent
From last month:
The Brexit undertones of the EU's impending anti tax avoidance legislation
Theresa May’s rhetoric about “burning injustices” has been quietly dropped by the Conservatives after being told that it risked boosting support for Labour.
Two years ago Mrs May used her first speech as prime minister on the steps of Downing Street to vow to tackle the injustices which meant that the poor, working class, state educated and women struggled to get on in life.
However, the language is understood to have been ditched, with Tory MPs discouraged from using it in their campaign leaflets after internal party polling suggested that Mrs May was not trusted to fulfil the promises. Instead Labour was winning “hands down” on dealing with issues such as poverty, housing and discrimination, Tory insiders indicated...
Tory party orders MPs to ditch rhetoric on burning injustices | News | The Times
Meanwhile, others who voted for Brexit are pushing for a very different scenario of low tax - which the US is keen on:
The Beauty of Tax Competition: Will US Cuts Prompt Other Countries to Follow Suit? - Foundation for Economic Education
But the EU is not:
The Anti Tax Avoidance Directive - European Commission
I've seen how the EU tackles tax evasion versus the US – and if Brexit Britain follows Trump, we're headed for disaster | The Independent
From last month:
The Brexit undertones of the EU's impending anti tax avoidance legislation
Jack Peat
June 21, 2018
The European Union’s move to end tax avoiding practices within its member states clashes all too conveniently with Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
The directive, which was presented by the Commission on 28th January 2016 and was adopted on June 20th of the same year, follows the Conservative-led Brexit process with surprising accuracy. One month after the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive was presented David Cameron announced a referendum on Britain’s relationship with the EU, and three days after it was adopted the vote to Leave had been cast.
Far from it been at the heart of the British public’s motives to leave the EU, it was undoubtedly at the forefront of the minds of those who were driving the movement. Executive officials of the pro-Brexit press are all noted tax avoiders, with Rupert Murdoch of News Corp, the Barclay brothers of the Telegraph and Lord Rothermere enjoying non-domicile status in the UK...
The Brexit undertones of the EU's impending anti tax avoidance legislation
And from last year:
At What Point Do We Admit Brexit Was About Tax Evasion?
June 21, 2018
The European Union’s move to end tax avoiding practices within its member states clashes all too conveniently with Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
The directive, which was presented by the Commission on 28th January 2016 and was adopted on June 20th of the same year, follows the Conservative-led Brexit process with surprising accuracy. One month after the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive was presented David Cameron announced a referendum on Britain’s relationship with the EU, and three days after it was adopted the vote to Leave had been cast.
Far from it been at the heart of the British public’s motives to leave the EU, it was undoubtedly at the forefront of the minds of those who were driving the movement. Executive officials of the pro-Brexit press are all noted tax avoiders, with Rupert Murdoch of News Corp, the Barclay brothers of the Telegraph and Lord Rothermere enjoying non-domicile status in the UK...
The Brexit undertones of the EU's impending anti tax avoidance legislation
And from last year:
At What Point Do We Admit Brexit Was About Tax Evasion?
by Josh Hamilton 14/11/2017
Back in 2015, Britain rejected plans announced by Brussels to combat ‘industrial-scale tax avoidance by the world’s biggest multinationals’.
Britain had built a corporate tax haven for multinationals that included slashing corporation tax from 28 per cent to 20 per cent — new favourable tax regimes for multinationals with offshore financing subsidiaries, and tax breaks for patent-owning companies. As a result, Britain saw a number of large corporations like Aon, Fiat Industrial, and Starbucks’ European operations set up headquarters in the UK with a small number of staff in order to take advantage of these tax laws …
The common tax regulations would have clamped down on offshoring and removed many of these elements of Britain’s competitive tax advantages over other EU member states. Then European Commissioner for Tax, Pierre Moscovici, stated that: ‘The current rules for corporate taxation no longer fit the modern context, as corporate tax planning has become more sophisticated and competitive forces between member states have increased, the tools for ensuring fair tax competition within the EU have reached their limits’.
Earlier in 2015, Conservative, UKIP and DUP MEPs also voted against EU plans to crack down on corporate tax dodging, by making companies report where they make their profits and pay taxes. The plan included a requirement for all member states to agree on a common EU position for the definition of tax havens and for coordinated penalties to be imposed upon countries or territories across the world that are uncooperative in tackling tax evasion.
Then just two weeks ago, the EU revealed that they were set to launch an investigation into a British Government scheme that could help multinational firms pay less tax. The EU believes that the special exemptions for multinationals in Britain do not comply with EU competition rules as they allow them to pay less tax than their domestic-only competitors. So with the release of the Paradise Papers last week, it is useful to examine the relationship that Britain has with tax avoiders and evaders and the UK’s stance on the EU clamp-down on tax dodging tactics.
The crux of the investigation centres around the UK’s ‘controlled foreign company’ (CFC) rules that George Osborne implemented in 2013. It allows a multinational company that resides in the UK to reduce its tax bill by moving some taxable income to an offshore subsidiary (or CFC)...
At What Point Do We Admit Brexit Was About Tax Evasion? | Shout Out UK
Alastair Campbell provides some context - with a book written by Jacob Rees-Mogg's father back in 1997:
THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF, MAY EXPLAIN REES-MOGG LOVE OF HARD BREXIT
Posted by Alastair Campbell | Aug 13, 2018 | Brexit
...
The driving theme of this book is the information revolution, ‘the most sweeping in history’, liberating individuals at the expense of the 20th century nation-state. Indeed, the authors argue that microprocessing will subvert and destroy the nation state, creating new forms of social organisation in the process. It will be faster than any previous revolution, and not without pain.
The driving theme of this book is the information revolution, ‘the most sweeping in history’, liberating individuals at the expense of the 20th century nation-state. Indeed, the authors argue that microprocessing will subvert and destroy the nation state, creating new forms of social organisation in the process. It will be faster than any previous revolution, and not without pain.
The ‘Sovereign Individuals’ who will gain most from this liberation are ‘the brightest, most successful and ambitious’ among us, ‘those who can educate and motivate themselves …. Genius will be unleashed, freed from both the oppression of government and the drags of racial and ethnic prejudice.’
In this bright new world, government is but a drag on ambition and success, welfare something the rich are forced to fund for the less bright, successful and ambitious. Real success, they argue, will be measured not just by how many zeroes you can add to your net worth, but whether you can structure your affairs in a way that enables you to realise your full autonomy and independence. … autonomous of government, independent of communal responsibility. ‘Persons of even quite modest means will soar as the gravitational pull of politics on the global economy weakens. Unprecedented financial independence will be a reachable goal in your lifetime or that of your children.’
The Sovereign Individuals, this vision of wonder goes on, will compete and interact on terms that echo the relations among the gods in Greek myth. ‘The elusive Mount Olympus of the next Millennium will be in cyberspace.’ Some will be as rich as Bill Gates. The ‘cyberpoor’ will be those with an income of less than $200,000 a year. But here is what Sovereign Individuals can really like about cyberspace – there will be no cyberwelfare, no cybertaxes and no cybergovernment. ‘The good news is that politicians will no more be able to dominate, suppress and regulate the greater part of commerce in this new realm than the legislators of the ancient Greek city-states could have trimmed the beard of Zeus.’
Government is constantly equated with organised crime, Bill Clinton portrayed as something akin to a gangster, but this change, they argue, will force governments to do less, and do what they still do according to the values of the market. Governments will have to treat people like customers, ‘and less in a way that organised criminals treat the victims of a shakedown racket… First in scores, then in hundreds, and ultimately in the millions, individuals will escape the shackles of politics.’
As the modern nation-state ‘decomposes’, we are warned that ‘latter-day barbarians like the Russian mafia, other ethnic criminal gangs, drug lords, and renegade covert agencies will be laws unto themselves. ‘They already are.’
But Sovereign Individuals of the Information Age, like the ancient gods, will enjoy a kind of ‘diplomatic immunity’ from political decisions affecting mere mortals. Meanwhile, the capacity of nation-states to raise money for redistribution will collapse, and ‘the information aristocracy’ will move their wealth to wherever they are least troubled by politicians, whose capacity for taxing will fall by 50-70 percent.
Now we are at the heart of the argument. ‘Transactions on the Internet or the World Wide Web can be encrypted and will soon be almost impossible for tax collectors to capture. Tax-free money already compounds far faster offshore than onshore funds still subject to the high tax burden imposed by the twentieth-century nation-state. After the turn of the millennium, much of the world’s commerce will migrate into the new realm of cyberspace, a region where governments will have no more dominion than they exercise over the bottom of the sea or the outer planets. … Cyberspace is the ultimate offshore jurisdiction. An economy with no taxes. Bermuda in the sky with diamonds. When this greatest tax haven of them all is fully open for business, all funds will essentially be offshore funds at the discretion of their owner. The state has grown used to treating its taxpayers as a farmer treats his cows, keeping them in a field to be milked. Soon, the cows will have wings. Like an angry farmer, the state will no doubt take desperate measures at first to tether and hobble its escaping herd. It will employ covert and even violent means to restrict access to liberating technologies. Such expedients will work only temporarily, if at all. The twentieth-century nation-state, with all its pretensions, will starve to death as its tax revenues decline.’
Cybercurrencies will deliver monetary independence to individuals. Governments’ ability to control money by printing it will be transcended, the authors say – this is 1997 remember – by mathematical algorithms that have no physical existence…. ‘Only the poor will be victims of inflation.’
The book is written somewhat in the manner of a memo to investors. ‘A series of transition crises lies ahead … We expect it to be a time of great danger and great reward … Increasingly autonomous individuals and bankrupt, desperate governments will confront one another across a new divide. We expect to see a radical restructuring of the nature of sovereignty and the virtual death of politics before the transition is over. Instead of state domination and control of resources, you are destined to see the privatisation of almost all services governments now provide.’
Privatisation of services heralds ‘the ultimate form of privatisation – the sweeping denationalisation of the individual.’ The Sovereign Individual will not be the asset of any state, nor even a citizen, but a customer of competing jurisdictions. Once sovereignty is commercialised, people will choose their jurisdictions, much as they now choose their insurance companies or their religions. Jurisdictions that fail to deliver will face bankruptcy and liquidation, ‘just as incompetent commercial enterprises or failed religious congregations do.’
The authors’ hatred of welfare could not be clearer. It marks a welfare state up against out and out Communism, but very much down against ‘a genuine laissez-faire enclave like colonial Hong Kong.’
And how is this for a radical right-wing view of public services, in which the idea of co-operative pooling of resources for common good like roads and hospitals is clearly anathema? ‘If you went into a store to buy furniture, and the salespeople took your money but then proceeded to ignore your requests and consult others about how to spend your money, you would quite rightly be upset. You would not think it normal or justifiable if the employees of the store argued that you really did not deserve the furniture, and that it should be shipped instead to someone whom they found more worthy. The fact that something very like this happens in dealings with government shows how little control the “customers” actually have.’
Fear not though, oh Sovereign Individual, for all your transactions will occur not only over the Net, but outside the jurisdictions of nation-states. ‘Payment will be rendered in cybercurrency. Profits will be booked in cyberbanks. Investments will be made in cyberbrokages. Many transactions will not be subject to taxation…. Extraterritorial regulatory power will collapse…. Control over money will migrate from the halls of power to the global marketplace. Any individual or firm with access to cyberspace will be able to easily shift out of any currency that appears in danger of depreciation. Unlike today, there will be no necessity to deal in legal tender.’
There will, it is admitted, be ‘left-behinds,’ and they will become ‘increasingly jingoistic and unpleasant’ as the impact of information technology grows. There will be a backlash, and it could well turn violent. Social peace will be in jeopardy, especially in America and Europe. ‘The more psychopathic of these unhappy souls’ will strike out against anyone with more prosperity. The rich and immigrants will be most at risk. ‘A furious nationalist reaction will sweep the world,’ we are told. Part of this will be Luddite anti-technology rebellions.
‘One of the crucial challenges of the great transformation ahead will be maintaining order in the face of escalating violence, or alternatively escaping its brunt… It is difficult to guess at precisely what point the reaction will turn ugly. Our guess is that the recriminations will intensify when Western nations begin to unambiguously crack apart in the manner of the former Soviet Union.’
Again, though, Sovereign Individuals must not fear, because ‘every time a nation-state cracks up, it will facilitate further devolution and encourage the autonomy of Sovereign Individuals. We expect to see a significant multiplication of sovereign entities, as scores of enclaves and jurisdictions more akin to city-states emerge from the rubble of nations.’
The rubble of nations eh? In case we haven’t got the message over four hundred pages, we are given a final summarising reminder. ‘The argument of this book clearly informs the decision to redeploy your capital, if you have any. Citizenship is obsolete. To optimise your lifetime earnings and become a Sovereign Individual you will need to become a customer of a government or protection service rather than a citizen. Instead of paying whatever tax burden is imposed upon you by grasping politicians, you will be better positioned to prosper in the Information Age by freeing yourself to negotiate a private tax treaty that obliges you to pay no more for services of government than they are actually worth to you.’
There you go. Quite a vision. It is about as free market a view of the world as you could imagine, fiercely anti politics, with democracy itself called into question. So why, you are wondering, have I subjected you to this profoundly right-wing, anti-state, anti-welfare, anti-rules worldview, most of which fills me with fear and loathing? And why was my man at Marylebone so keen that I read this co-authored tome? Not because of the identity of the first author, American James Dale Davidson. But because of the second, Lord William Rees-Mogg, father of Jacob.
Of course Rees-Mogg Jr may not share every part of the Rees-Mogg Sr worldview. But we know from his own mouth that he shares much of it, and reading The Sovereign Individual, it is easy to see why he so loves Brexit, and the chaos and disorder, and opportunities for disaster capitalism and super-elitism, that it may provide. At least his father was honest in his depiction of that vision – the commercialisation of sovereignty, Bermuda in the sky with diamonds – as a good one for people of wealth who can put their assets wherever they like, so that taxes and inflation are for the ‘left-behinds’ not the Sovereign Individuals born to rule, but freed from all rules themselves. Lord Mogg would be very proud of his son’s role in trying to get Britain to the hardest Brexit of all, whatever the impact on the ‘left-behinds’ whose votes were just a necessary support on the journey, but whose needs will be forgotten as soon as the vision of Bermuda in the sky with diamonds is upon us.
The most important book you have never heard of, may explain Rees-Mogg love of hard Brexit | Alastair Campbell
Alastair Campbell: Resist Jacob Rees-Mogg’s vision of a brave new world | Latest Brexit news and top stories - The New European
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