The UK General Election Is July 4— Voters Are Being Asked To Choose Between 2 Dreadful Candidates

Since Rishi Sunak called for a general election this summer (July 4), the Conservatives have remained at around 20% in the polls while Labour has continued flirting with 50%. The most recent poll— YouGov’s for The Times from May 29 and 30— has Labour at 46%, the Conservatives at 21%, Reform UK at 15%, the Lib Dems at 8% and the Greens at 6%. Sunak and Starmer will face off in their first televised head-to-head debate on Tuesday. Unless there’s a significant change, Labour is going to wind up with between 350 to 400 seats in Parliament. The Conservatives will be down to between 150 or 100! The  Reform Party (formerly Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party), which is very right-wing and has just one member now could go up to around 20-40 seats. The Lib-Dems (currently 15 seats will be lucky to hold on to the 15), The Greens, who have just a single seat now, are likely to wind up with between 5 and 10 seats.

Blue is Conservative and red is Labour

This will be the first general election since Britain made the catastrophic decision to withdraw from the EU and the first general election since the 2019 Boris Johnson landslide. In that one, the Conservatives won 365 seats (out of 639 who vote). In the interim, the Conservatives have lost 20 seats due to 23 by-elections as well as defections and suspensions. Labour won just 202 seats and now has 206.

Reform UK, which is allied with Northern Ireland’s Unionists (whose leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, was arrested at the end of March for raping several women), is a MAGA-like right-wing, xenophobic populist party. They’re offering themselves as an alternative to the tired, out-of-touch Conservative Party and are campaigning on free-market policies, lower taxes for the wealthy, reduced government spending, privatization, abolishing the House of Lords, less bureaucracy, strict immigration controls, school choice, more funding for police and stricter sentencing for criminals. MAGA!

Boris Johnson announced his resignation on July 6, 2022, and Liz Truss, an incompetent  MAGAty creature, was elected leader. She announced her resignation 4 months later, the shortest premiership in British history. Sunak was elected to replace her on October 25, 2022. 

Keir Starmer, isn’t a socialist and, at best, is a U.K. equivalent of a Blue Dog Democrat. In other words he’s a worthless sack of shit. He was elected Labour’s leader in 2020 after Jeremy Corbin resigned, taking responsibility for the Labour rout in the 2019 elections. The two men couldn’t be less alike. Corbyn is running for reelection as an independent and Labour is running some random faker against him. BY the way, Bobby Gillespie (lead singer of Primal Scream and before that drummer for Jesus and Mary Chain) has endorsed Corbyn.

Few people are excited about a Starmer-led Labour government but are very excited about punishing the Conservatives. Here’s some typical Starmer coverage (yesterday): “Keir Starmer has said he will lead from the centre ground if elected prime minister and declared wealth creation to be his ‘number one mission.’ In an interview with The Times, Starmer said the centre ground was ‘where most people are at. As a nation, broadly speaking we’re a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch but we are in the centre ground of politics. People don’t like the extremes of the right or the left. They are reasonably tolerant. They want themselves, their families and the country to improve and make progress,’ he said. Starmer said the ‘only way our country can go forward’ was if people and businesses make money. ‘I think it’s a good thing that people are aspirational. When I say our number one mission is economic growth, you could say our number one mission is wealth creation. Now that’s an odd thing for the Labour party to say. It might have been in the past.’”

His centrist pitch comes as the party conducts what some see as a purge of Labour’s left wing. Earlier this week, the sitting MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Faiza Shaheen, who had been selected by her local party to run as the Labour candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, were deselected by the party’s national executive committee, where Starmer allies have majority control, and replaced by figures on the right of the party.  On Tuesday, The Times reported that Diane Abbott [the first black woman elected to parliament and the longest-serving black MP] would be barred from standing as the Labour candidate for her Hackney North and Stoke Newington seat. The news prompted a backlash from many quarters of the party and Abbott vowed to be the MP “as long as it is possible.”

…The interview comes before the announcement of Labour’s Back to Work plan, which aims to get 2 million more people into work. The initiative would include a combined national jobs and careers service, devolved funding and leadership from mayors to “get more people with health conditions and disabilities into work” and opportunities for 18- to 21-year-olds to access training and apprenticeships.

In a statement, Starmer said: “With Labour, those who can work, will work. We want more people into work, to get on at work and to get the benefits bill down. Under the Tories, there are too many people who are not in work, who should be.

“Too many people stuck in jobs with no promise of earning a better income. Young people who are yet to experience work, at risk of falling off the radar. We can’t go on like this. It’s time for change.”

In an OpEd yesterday, Patrick Diamond, a former Tony Blair and Gordon Brown advisor, and Queen Mary University lecturer Colm Murphy, urged Austerity-oriented Starmer to reform the British tax system which favors the wealthy. “Critics have condemned the Labour leadership for cowardice and ideological treachery,” they wrote. “Across Europe, social democrats have been warned of the electoral dangers of ‘austerity from the left.’ Some academics suggest that Labour should reject economic orthodoxy. In the 2010s, when interest rates were at historic lows, the anti-austerity argument for borrowing had salience. However, times have changed. Inflationary volatility and uncertainty over future interest rates make the argument for more borrowing without caveats (or ‘rules’) less credible. So too do supply-side constraints after Brexit that deplete the economy’s productive capacity. That does not mean Labour should merely embrace ‘austerity-lite’ policies. Addressing the key challenges of our era— from the green transition to a shrunken public realm— requires major investment. The task is to forge a politics of prudence that blends the commitment to social justice with a disciplined approach to the public finances.”

Sounding like they mightbe on the right track but could definitely use some grounding in Modern Monetary Theory, the two wrote that “Labour needs an agenda in government that confronts the urgent imperative of raising resources through major UK tax reform. We must break with the assumptions of the post-2008 era, which confused fiscal orthodoxy with slashing public spending and reduced state intervention. Crucially the forms of prudential politics embraced by past Labour chancellors were radically different from the ‘austerity’ with which we are familiar. After 2010, Osborne’s Treasury cut public spending, swerved major tax hikes, froze public sector wages and decimated capital investment while the Bank of England boosted private consumption and asset wealth with ultra-loose monetary policy. The outcomes were starkly regressive. In contrast, past Labour ministers squeezed wealth and private consumption to enable public investment. Taxes were an essential tool. In the late 1940s Cripps imposed a one-off capital income levy, calling on the public to ‘subordinate our personal interests to the greater good of our country.’ Even Brown restrained the growth of personal income, albeit in rosier times, to invest in public services. Both used ‘prudential’ politics to further the egalitarian goals of social democracy.”

Voters, of course, don’t like tax rises. As a result, Labour avoids tax pledges like the plague. But while the tax burden on working people is at a historic high, taxes on wealth and capital remain comparatively low. And taxes can become, if not popular, then less unpopular if framed as “necessary” to fulfil progressive ambitions such as a “citizen’s endowment” for every young person to invest in education or a future home, alongside funding services that give children a fair start in life.

A newly elected Labour government should launch a commission on UK tax reform. There is an overwhelming economic and ethical case for higher taxes on wealth and for taxing capital gains at the same rate as income, not least the soaring levels of wealth inequality in Britain.

Previous research indicates such a reform could raise at least £10bn a year and is relatively popular with voters. The tax commission would engage directly with citizens to work through key choices on tax prior to any final decision by ministers. In addition, reform of council tax through a revaluation of tax bands based on current property prices should be linked to a new devolved funding settlement for local authorities, boosting investment in local services.

Basically, what they’re telling Starmer is that Labour should shift the burden of taxation away from income and employment and towards unearned wealth and capital (which they say should be taxed at the same rate as income), creating greater social investment and addressing “soaring levels of wealth inequality.” Starmer has been adamant that there will be no wealth tax under his government.