The Tory manifesto is ‘a clear plan’ promising ‘bold action’. Rishi Sunak uses the word ‘bold’ three times in two paragraphs. If it were bold, it would not need its 80 pages. Its detail is best seen as a resource for candidates trying to deploy specific promises with specific interest groups. This is a way of shoring up the Tory vote, not of winning the election – a tacit admission of defeat. It may have an eye, too, to what happens afterwards. Labour wants to be able to say that the Conservatives crashed out on the most extreme manifesto ever. Indeed, Sir Keir Starmer is already calling it a Jeremy Corbyn-style document, but from the right. This is untrue. The manifesto is essentially technocratic, as is the party’s leader. It is not wicked or extreme, just rather beside the point.
In each election, a game is played in which Labour and/or the Conservatives try to conceal the taxes they intend to increase. The concealment rarely lasts, but it buys the parties a bit of time to distract public attention while the media go on the hunt for the missing piece. In this election, we have reached the point at which it becomes clear that Labour, having foresworn rises in income tax, National Insurance or VAT, will therefore have to increase the rates of capital and property taxes and/or the spread of such taxes. This will be presented as hitting only the rich. It would hit them: indeed, the prospect is already driving mobile capitalists abroad. But it will mark a wider policy shift, attacking the capital accumulation of millions of householders, something which no government has done for a long time. How clear will Labour be about this? Before the 1979 election, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives had decided that, to fulfil their big promise to cut income tax, they would have to raise VAT. In their manifesto, they were surprisingly frank: ‘We shall cut income tax at all levels to reward hard work, responsibility and success…Growing North Sea oil revenues and reductions in Labour’s public spending plans will not be enough to pay for the income tax cuts the country needs. We must therefore be prepared to switch to some extent from taxes on earnings to taxes on spending.’ This passage positively directed the reader to the idea that VAT must rise. What was never admitted was the rate – a huge jump from 8 per cent to 15 per cent. It will be interesting to see, in the remaining weeks, whether Labour can attain a similar level of telling the truth, but not the whole truth, or whether my trade will have to keep chasing it to the last.
Mike Lynch’s acquittal on charges of fraud in a San Francisco court is a triumph of his spirit. Hardly anyone escapes the traps of such trials in the United States and therefore almost everyone, guilty or innocent, makes a plea bargain. Mr Lynch refused to do this, taking the stand and convincing the jury of his innocence. He relied, as most of the terrified accused do not, on the presumption of innocence, which rightly lays the burden of proof on the prosecution. He knew it did not have that proof. Very few would have been brave and rich enough to withstand Hewlett Packard’s corporate lawfare. He was. Mike Lynch and his wife Angela are friendly acquaintances of mine, and I have been moved by their resilience under fire over so many years. A shocking aspect of the case, over which Britain should now act, is the US/UK extradition treaty under which Mike was forced to go to America. It is, in effect, one-way, because America is much better than Britain at looking after its own. Tony Blair negotiated the deal during the ‘war against terrorism’ after 11 September 2001. But it was a gesture that ignored principles of justice and still puts British entrepreneurs in jeopardy if they tangle with American business – the sort of special relationship no one would want.
The Wine Society has just sent us members its annual report. It rightly blows its own trumpet this year, because 2024 is the society’s 150th anniversary. Its success is deserved. It has more than 500,000 members and sticks to its founding purpose to ‘provide [them] with the highest possible quality of wines at the best possible price’ – simple, but not easy. It took in £149 million last year. I particularly like its staff’s courtesy, the speed of free delivery and its encouragement of wine innovation. Perhaps it does too much of a hard sell online these days, but this may genuinely help members select from its bewildering array of 5,600 wines. The average age of members is 61, so naturally the society seeks younger ones. But I can think of a powerful reason why that average might not fall: housing is so expensive nowadays that few people under 50 have the room to cellar wine. That problem won’t go away. I have a wider question. Everyone admires the mutual structure of the Wine Society, so why do so few imitate it? Is it partly because in our time enormous salaries and bonuses are considered the sacred right of chief executives, taking precedence over matters like trust and customer satisfaction? The Wine Society succeeds because it worships Bacchus, not Mammon.
Among my many unsolicited emails are two correspondents called Brian. One is called Brian Grim, PhD, President of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation, and Global Chair of Dare to Overcome. His emails are about things like religiously inclusive workplaces. The other is Brian S. Gross, who speaks for Beducated, ‘the biggest pleasure-based sex education platform on the internet’. He offers tips for celebrating ‘Masturbation May’ or following the Kink/Fetish Speaking Tour of Dr Lori Beth Bisbey, ‘a queer consensually non-monogamous leather woman, [who] is in a full-time authority transfer-based relationship with her husband’. I have not so far taken up either Brian’s invitations, but I do rather long to bring Messrs Grim and Gross together.
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