While Labour delegates gave up their lunch break to queue for Jeremy Corbyn’s big (Beatrix Potter meets Karl Marx?) speech, sharp-suited lobbyists headed nervously for an “Is the tax system fair?” fringe meeting in the Grand Hotel. Good news awaited them – and bad.
Fast-talking Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), revealed that the famous top 1% of earners (on £150,000-plus) already pay 30% of all UK income tax. “It shows how staggeringly dependent the economy is on a very small number of people,” said Johnson, who noted that austerity had hit the rich hard, though not as hard as the poorest (those on £20-40k incomes were protected).
Add in VAT (etc) and 60% of the 1%’s income goes to George Osborne. If Jezza taxes them more, “there will be consequences in terms of their behaviour”, warns the IFS. What’s more, inequality is far greater within the 1%.
D:Ream lives on
Blairites completely wiped out? Pockets of resistance remain. At the moderate Usdaw union’s conference party they played the New Labour anthem Things Can Only Get Better. As strong drink was taken there were cries of “Tony, Tony”, and God Save the Queen was sung. Names have been taken.
Steel out, cakes in
It may be a “kinder, gentler” Labour party in the future, as the leader promises – but business is business. Susan Lewis, of the Community union – which represents steelworkers, has lost her seat on the party’s national executive (NEC) in favour of Pauline McCarthy of the bakers’ union, allies of John McDonnell. The NEC, a key battleground in any attempt to Corbynise the party, is still controlled by the “old politics”.
Crystal Boulton
They say no one spotted Jez as a future Labour leader, but it’s not quite true. Back at the Tory conference in 1983, a slim young TV-am reporter called Adam Boulton was on the Blackpool seafront talking about rising Tory stars elected that June. “What about new Labour stars?” interjected some idiot back in the studio. Panicking, Boulton blurted out: “Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Baldry.” Almost right. Baldry was actually a new Tory MP. “ You pillock, you meant Tony Blair,” John Prescott gently told young Boulton when next they met.
WWKHS?
The leader ended his much-applauded speech with a resounding quote from “the last bearded leader” Keir Hardie (actually it was George Lansbury) about “stirring up divine discontent with wrong” in unequal Edwardian Britain. Hardie, who never held office, is more quoted than any other leader in Brighton this week. Copies of What Would Keir Hardie Say? (Luath Press £9.99) have been flying off the conference bookshop shelves. A hundred extra copies arrived on Tuesday.
Bahn humbug
Renationalization of Britain’s rail network is one popular cause in Brighton that definitely shares wide public support. Impassioned delegates point to Deutsche Bahn, the German rail giant that is also a big player in UK transport, as a fine example of a brilliant state system. France’s SNCF is state-owned, and so is the Dutch ProRail. But DB was privatised after German reunification in 1994 and is a fine example of a private joint stock company in which the state remains the largest stakeholder. Not quite the same thing.
