Friday, September 28, 2012

Will the Tory Party rule alone again?

Are Conservatives really interested in survival as a ruling party? Disraeli is championed as someone who grasped what was needed to re-make the Tories in his time. He was on the side of the disfranchised and nurtured their support though his career and left an enduring legacy. He spotted the trend and went with it.  Philip Blond in the Financial Times (26 Sep 2012) in a comment on the 'pleb' cycling episode at the gates of Downing Street  Modern conservatives will make plebs of us all suggests that 'conservatives are unknowingly creating an oligarchy, one which make us all plebs' . They are defending an economic system that serves the minority, and  protecting monopoly interests. He dispels the drip-down, percolation theory of wealth transfer, calling it a 'past fiction'. He thinks conservatives may not win a general election for years. Is what should be stark-staringly obvious to any heir to Disraeli slipping through Tory fingers? 

Janen Ganesh (FT 25 Sept 2012), A tax on wealth is true to Conservative principles  takes the view that taxation on income and work should be replaced with levies on land value. He foresees a drift to Labour if Tories don't address such taxes on wealth. The Lib-Dems are big on land value tax, as per Vince Cable's comment on the mansion tax: 'It is the first step to the proper taxation of wealth and land...it is popular and right' (FT 25 Sept 2012) . So might the Lib-Dems continue as coalition partners with Labour after the next UK election? 

With world tycoons using London property as a wealth haven, often leaving large buildings and even some districts under-occupied for much of the time, especially with the perennial  affordable housing shortage, a huge scandal is brewing. Which party is going to join the Lib-Dems and come out more clearly in favour of renters with their curtailed housing benefit?

When The Free Lunch - Fairness with Freedom  was published, such solutions were rarely mentioned in the media. The book champions the cause of the empowered citizen against the powerful in a Disraeli conservative way rather than an old style socialist way. But is Labour  socialist? This is what Tory MP George Hollingbery, now Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary said: about the book at its launch in 2002.
posted by Charles Bazlinton 

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