Bel is thinking

So the Government now recognises that there is a ‘moral case’ for promoting the traditional family through the tax system?

Never mind that the Conservative Party has been saying this for a long time, and being accused by Labour of being ‘nasty’ and judgmental.

I am yet to be convinced that Labour actually recognise that marriage is actually the best state in which to bring up children. Of course not. This latest about-face is down to nothing more than political expediency.

And they have the cheek to accuse other people of ‘flip-flopping’.

And speaking of Labour’s U-turn, please remind me: who was it abolished the Married Couples’ Allowance for under 65s, in the first place?

Step forward, Mr G. Brown.

The Chancellor has just announced that spouses and civil partners may now transfer their tax-free allowances between themselves. The idea, I suppose, is that this would enable their heirs to receive more than the basic inheritance tax allowance.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but can the same effect not be achieved by couples structuring their wills to ensure this? And even after one of the couple have died, I would have thought it was still possible effectively to amend the will to achieve this result, by using a post-death variation.

If it is already possible to do all this, what exactly is the value of this new tax relief?

I would appreciate any enlightenment.

UPDATE. 8.23pm. Seems like my initial suspicion about this ‘tax relief’ has been proved right. Fraser Nelson of the Spectator is reporting that City accountants have raised the point that this so-called ‘tax relief’ can already be achieved by a couple structuring their wills properly. See also this article here.

These New Labour people just can’t stop spinning.

Just listening to Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report. He has announced, with effect from April next year, the abolition of taper relief. Click here for the press notices (pdf).

The way taper relief works is that it reduces the chargeable gain when a capital asset is sold. This relief is available to everybody who sells, or otherwise disposes of, a chargeable asset. It is not a special relief claimed only by private equity barons.

The amount of taper relief available depends on whether the asset being sold can be classed as a ‘business asset’, and also, on how long the asset has been held. A business asset held for at least two years would attract the most generous taper relief rate. In such a case, only 25 per cent of the gain would be charged to tax. In the case of a taxpayer paying tax at the 40 per cent rate, this works out at an ‘effective rate’ of 10 per cent on the gain.

So, in summary, if you are a higher rate taxpayer, holding a business asset, and you have held it for at least two years, you end up paying capital gains tax on sale of only 10 per cent.

However, the Chancellor has just announced that taper relief will be abolished, and will be replaced by an 18 per cent tax rate.

This seems to equate to a tax rise on anybody who has held a business asset for at least two years. Including small business owners who are disposing of some of their capital assets.

So, in attempting to clobber private equity barons, New Labour has attacked every businessman in the land, some of whom can hardly afford it.

The Treasury is publishing consultation on the abolition of taper relief. I will be following closely to see the extent of the proposed abolition. If the detailed proposals bear out what we have been led to believe from the press notice, then small businesses should worry.

Over at Conservative Home, a thoughtful and well-written article by Donal Blaney, offering ten tips to the Conservative Party leadership on how to build on this weekend’s favourable news. Of the ten tips he gives, here are the six I like best:

• 1. Continue to campaign on traditional as well as non-traditional conservative themes.
• 2. Remain on the offensive against Gordon Brown.
• 3. Do not underestimate Gordon Brown again.
• 4. Stop gratuitously attacking the Tory Right.
• 5. Learn from the Quentin Davies fiasco.
• …
• 7. Ensure maximum commitment from the Shadow Cabinet.

Very good points. I hope the party leadership takes heed. You can read Donal Blaney’s article here.

Loud cries of ‘coward!’ everywhere.

What a humiliating climbdown. This is the result of weeks of strutting and smug swaggering. Let this be a lesson to politicians everywhere. And I would hope that the Conservative Party will learn from the humiliation of Gordon Brown. They should leave the well-deserved gloating to the political press and bloggers, and instead concentrate on working out and improving policies for the good of the country.

Iain has had a few digs at Brown today. He reminds us about the book Gordon Brown wrote on courage, and suggests that the publisher should perhaps demand their advance back. I know Iain’s only being tongue-in-cheek, but here is a suggestion: perhaps a coward is actually the best person to write a book on courage. There is an old African saying that runs thus:

‘We sometimes stand in the comfort of a coward’s compound and from there point out the ruins of a brave man’s house.’

The idea behind the proverb is that perhaps cowardice is a good vantage point from where to admire and recount the tales of braver men. Perhaps that is what Gordon Brown has been doing all along.

David Cameron’s speech is being hyped in the media today as ‘the speech of his life’. It is no such thing. At the start of the week, when there was despair in the Party, it was crucial that he excelled today. However, following the unexpected success of the past few days, the pressure on him has reduced considerably.

Anyway, here are a few things I would like to hear in his speech today.

Some acknowledgement, however passing, that the grammar school madness of a few months ago, was misguided. (Some hope. I don’t expect him to apologise for calling supporters of grammar schools ‘delusional’, but some humility would be fine.)

Something about social justice, picking up on the theme of Iain Duncan Smith’s speech yesterday. He should emphasise the role of Government, but just as importantly, the role of the community and the voluntary sector.

A promise about further tax cuts. No need for much detail, as Labour would only nick them. Just something further to indicate that tax cuts are part of the longer term strategy. But please, no repeat of that ’share the proceeds of growth’ expression. I’ve heard it enough times.

Something on Gordon Brown. No need for personal attacks of the Hazel Blears variety. Just enough to stress the point that:

• Gordon Brown cannot pretend that he had nothing to do with Government policy for the past ten years. Law and order breakdown, high tax burden, dire public services despite record funding, pensions shortfalls - Brown is a key part of the Government that presided over all this.
• Gordon Brown’s so-called no-spin politics is just another example of typical New Labour spin, yesterday’s Iraq stunt being a good example.

I would like to return to the humility theme I mentioned earlier. David Cameron should address the British people with humility. He should make the point that the Conservative Party is here to serve, and not to get in people’s way unnecessarily. Politicians do not know better than the people, so they should be wary of lecturing people about how to live their lives. The point of a Conservative Government is to enable people to empower themselves. In this way, a proper Conservative Government is far more preferable to the current Government with its the smug, ‘we-know-best’ attitude, which was on full display at the Labour Conference last week.

Above all, David Cameron should make it plain that the Conservative Party will govern for all of Britain. I don’t think it will be hard to make that point after some of the speeches we have heard this week. I must say, there has been much commendable policy detail in all the main speeches. Following this conference, nobody can, with any seriousness, make the charge that it is difficult to know what the Party stands for. Whether or not an election is called, the Conservative message has started to come together, and that is something I very much welcome.

UPDATE. 3.30pm. Well! What a wonderful speech, addressed the issues of the day without resorting to personal attacks. He ascended above party politics, and came across as a statesman. The right dose of humility, enthusiasm aplenty, and a very clear idea of what a Conservative Government under David Cameron would do. Well done.

Now that the Conservative Party has enjoyed somewhat favourable headlines for two days running, one wonders what publicity-grabbing stunt Gordon Brown will want to pull, in order to attract attention to himself.

If he manages to sit through David Cameron’s speech (or even this whole week), without succumbing to the temptation to pull such a stunt, I’ll eat my hat.

Never before have I seen a politician so insecure.

UPDATE (2 October 2007). Gordon Brown arrived in Iraq this morning, amid talk of a ’significant reduction in troops’. I thought that under this new ‘no-spin’ era, such announcements were supposed to be made first to Parliament. Let’s wait and see.

Is Gordon Brown about to exploit our longsuffering troops, just to make himself look good?

FURTHER UPDATE. My question in the previous paragraph has just been answered with a resounding ‘Yes’. He has announced a cut in the troops by 1,000. Good that more troops are coming home soon (I’ll believe it when I see it), but sad that this is only being done today for the sake of one man’s vainglory.

Three stories from the Daily Mail today:

• a Cabinet minister who turned up late for a hospital function was photoshopped (by the hospital, and allegedly with his knowledge) into a picture taken earlier, so as to give the impression that he had arrived and posed with the other MPs there;
• allegations that the X-factor contest has been fixed, and the finalists have already been chosen, even at this early stage in the contest; and
• Nigella Lawson is accused of faking a bus trip on her television programme.

So what’s going on here? Every day, someone is accused of faking something, and these days it tends to be people whom one would assume, should have known better. (I must reiterate here that the X-factor and Nigella stories are merely allegations, at this stage.)

Together with the recent television phone-in scandals, there seems to be something interesting happening to our morals as a society. It would appear that it is  no longer important to get the facts right, so long as the bigger ’story’ or narrative, is in place. (I touched on this last week in my post about Miranda Grell.)

Earlier tonight, I watched the newspaper review on Sky News, featuring Iain Dale and Baroness Billingham, a Labour peer. Iain quite reasonably suggested that James Purnell, the Cabinet minister referred to above, should apologise for his part in the photoshop affair. The Sky News presenter (most likely playing devil’s advocate) wondered whether it was a big deal at all, because James Purnell did actually go to the hospital, even if a little later than the other MPs. The Baroness eagerly jumped on this, agreeing heartily. In her view, the photoshopped picture didn’t matter, because James Purnell derived no personal benefit (I dispute that: for a politician, publicity is a ‘personal benefit’; but let that pass), and that this was for a good cause, namely helping the hospital.

There is this whole idea that deliberate inaccuracies do not matter, as long as the objective, or the story, is valid, or for a good cause. I find that troubling. We saw that a few years ago in the case of the Mirror newspaper and the faked torture pictures. When the pictures were discovered to be fake, the defence used by the newspaper was along the lines of, ‘the pictures might have been fake, but the stories of abuse which they were highlighting, were true.’ That is a very dangerous line of reasoning, and one that has crept into social and political discourse. If even a hospital now sees nothing wrong in faking photographs, I wonder where we are headed as a country.

Is it also any wonder that exam standards are falling? A few months ago, Civitas published a report about how political correctness has corrupted the school curriculum. According to the report, teachers had ceased to teach the basics in some subjects, substituting fashionable theories for plain old facts. Such a state of affairs can only thrive in an environment where facts are not respected. For political correctness to reign in the classroom, there would first have to have been a downgrading of facts. Historical facts that are deemed ‘inconvenient’ would have to be disregarded, and then supplanted with fashionable doctrines. The same with any geographical or even biological facts that do not fit in with the new morality.

So it is that there is a disregard for facts, even in the classroom. A school, especially at elementary level, should be a place free of agenda, full of questioning, and with more than a passing regard for basic facts. That this is not the case is highlighted by news this week that a father has applied to court for an order to stop Al Gore’s climate change movie being shown in the classrooms. Gore’s movie is by no means the last word on climate change, its science has actually been challenged in places by serious scholars of the subject. For the Government to allow it to be shown in schools without giving room for a counter-view is just more evidence of the prevailing disregard for facts.

And let us not even get into the Iraq dossier. There is a view in some quarters that it mattered not that the evidence was blatantly falsified, so long as it fulfilled the noble aim of dislodging Saddam Hussein from power.

Back to James Purnell. The Conservative Party has called for his resignation. However, I don’t think he will resign. He will probably not even bother to apologise. In his mind, he probably feels that he has done no wrong. In typical New Labour fashion, he has already put all the blame on the hospital. In any case, he will probably spring for the ‘Baroness Billingham defence’: this was all in aid of a good cause, so what’s a little untruth here or there?

Just wondering why the sudden and eager adoption of conservative principles by Gordon Brown and New Labour is not being described in the media as a ‘lurch’ to the right. Or is that language only reserved for the Conservative Party?

Still, one good thing about this new-found conservatism among the Labour leadership, is that it makes it harder for Labour to accuse the Conservative Party of extremism. They can hardly accuse the Conservatives of ‘lurching’ to the right, when they themselves are speaking the language of conservatism.

The Conservative Party should therefore be bold, and use next week’s Conference to restate the core principles of conservatism. There is nothing to fear. The real conservative message is an attractive one; if it were not so, Labour would not be preaching it right now. And the Conservative Party can be confident of one thing: in the mouth of a Labour politician, the conservative message sounds inauthentic, opportunistic and hypocritical. Only a true conservative can convey his beliefs with sincerity and conviction. If there is such a person still left within the Conservative Party, may I suggest they hunt him down, and give him a platform to preach the word?

I’ve been watching journalists fall over themselves to praise Gordon Brown’s speech, but what I haven’t heard many of them point out is that some of the problems Gordon Brown identified yesterday were in existence in 1997, since when the Labour Government has had ten years to put them right. In fact, some of the problems were actually created by this Government, a Government in which Gordon Brown has been a key player.

Much of the media seem to be suffering from some sort of amnesia - a post-Tony Blair mind-wipe, if you like. Do they not remember that this very Gordon Brown was in charge of the nation’s purse strings for the last ten years? Ironic that in this so-called age of ‘no spin politics’, Gordon Brown seems to have blinded the media with the greatest spin of all.

And another thing: this wall-to-wall fawning coverage, complete with election speculation, makes me wonder whether there’s any bad news being buried this week. Surely someone somewhere will seize the opportunity.