Open letter to Sir Kier

Today's Sunday Times Matthew Syed.


Letter

I cannot see Labour doing any of those things, and if we rejoined the 'EU Single Market' would that affect how Britain would trade with the rest of the world, although he says otherwise, it sounds to me like a back door way into rejoining the EU.

If you are having trouble viewing the Sunday Times article, then here is a transcript of it.

"Get ready, Keir Starmer. Five years to stop us growing poorer than Poland
Tax, human rights, corruption and more must be ruthlessly reformed to steer Britain out of the doldrums.


Matthew Syed
Sunday May 05 2024, 12.01am, The Sunday Times


Dear Keir,
I know it’s presumptuous for people to write open letters (columnists included), so I hope you’ll forgive this missive.
Labour is heading for a landslide, but — as someone who has often voted Labour and once stood as a candidate — I’m worried that many in your top team are saying that this is a time for moderation; that the British public is sick of the radicalism of Trussonomics and a botched Brexit; that a first Labour term should adopt steady-as-she-goes incrementalism.
This would be disastrous. Britain is in a deep hole, with productivity stagnant and debt rising; a nation drifting on the currents of history. Donald Tusk was right: the average Pole will be richer than the average Brit within a few years. A steady-as-she-goes Labour will run out of goodwill within a year and money by the end of a first term.

That is why we need boldness on a scale eclipsing Attlee’s or Thatcher’s. The public knows this. It knows the UK needs radical surgery. It just wants it performed by a wise, public-spirited surgeon rather than erratic cowboys — which is what we had under Truss, Johnson et al.
So, here are some bold policy proposals that could transform the UK, making us fairer, richer, fleeter of foot; policies that have thus far been resisted by vested interests and powerful lobbies.

First, tax.
Imagine a world without income tax. Or corporation tax. This is doable if we shift our tax system to one based on land values.
A recent paper proposed that a tax levied on the rental value of land instead of earned assets would increase growth by 15 per cent by turbocharging the incentive to work and start a businesses. Almost all economists have been in favour of such a tax, from Adam Smith and Milton Friedman to Joseph Stiglitz and Martin Wolf.
They know that a tax on unproductive land is efficient, since land can’t be squirrelled away in tax havens. The alternative, a wealth tax, would penalise productive capital and lead to offshoring on a grand scale.
The other advantage of a land tax is that it would finally end the Ponzi scheme at the heart of the British economy whereby low productivity is mitigated by mass immigration and funny money (quantitative easing), thereby inflating the value of land, leading to more aggressive rent-seeking and conferring ever larger gains on the 25,000 people who own half of the land in England and have done nothing to merit this bonanza (between 1995 and 2017 Britain’s net worth more than tripled, largely because of land values). This starves the Treasury of funds, adding momentum for more immigration, driving up land values more. This system is strangling us.
Such a tax can be introduced in stages to protect the “asset-rich, cash-poor elderly” and important farmland and would leave the vast majority better off in the short term and almost everyone in the long.
It’s a game-changer. Why hasn’t it happened? Partly because of the vested interests of large landowners like the Grosvenor family, who were given copious acreage by William the Conqueror, and whose ground rents are still distorting the London property market almost a thousand years later.

Wake up, Labour.
This has got to stop.

Second.
The bureaucratic state. The NHS is failing — and good on Wes Streeting for saying so. We should move towards a social insurance model with private sector input and a wider shift from cure to prevention. We also need to become much better at big projects, a point made by Dominic Cummings, whose writings on this topic are painfully apposite. This is one area in which we need disruption to the status quo of officials bungling projects and then moving department, with no institutional memory, accountability or learning. It is shocking — in fact disgusting — that this has been allowed to persist for decades. Look at the scandal of HS2.

Third.
Human rights. As a human rights lawyer you are perfectly placed to say what everyone knows: human rights are one of the great achievements of the West, but tribunals like the ECHR are out of control, reaching ever more eccentrically into areas of democratic prerogative, while treaties like the refugee convention are decades out of date.
Despotic states like Russia are fomenting instability in Africa to increase the flow of refugees, knowing that it will put pressure on Europe and louden the drumbeat of populists and fascists. Don’t take my word for it: this is the assessment of Frontex, the official EU borders agency.

My proposal, then:
Convene a new human rights conference that, unlike the discredited UN body, which is often chaired by human rights abusers, includes only nations that care about these values. This would be on the scale of the postwar watershed, creating a new legal framework, courts and obligations — and would crush the business model of people smugglers by giving nations the absolute right to deport anybody who arrives illegally, thereby opening up space to bring the most vulnerable (who can’t afford the criminal gangs) through safe routes. It would be a game-changer — resisted only by the increasingly deluded human rights lobby, who have become the useful idiots of the world’s despots.

Fourth.
Corruption. It is a bitter irony that the land of Magna Carta has become a labyrinth of sleaze and VIP lanes. Create a full cabinet position for the superb tax lawyer Dan Neidle to crack down on the abuse of tax loopholes by the super-rich, which doesn’t just create a fiscal black hole but fatally undermines consent for the tax system itself. Also give him a deputy to end the scandal of ministers and regulators going to work for companies over which they recently had oversight — and other forms of legalised corruption, like the travesty of the honours system. Work on abolishing the House of Lords, too.

Fifth. Planning.
Nimbyism is holding us back from investing in the wires, roads, homes and pipes that knit together a nation and nurture creativity and growth. British investment in fixed capital has been flat bottom of the international league table for decades, stymied by judicial reviews, decades-long consultations and more. The rule of law has become the rule of “nope!”. A reform of planning laws will not destroy our green and pleasant land but save it from the catastrophe of nationally beneficial projects being constantly checkmated by local objections, screwing everyone since nothing gets built. We are being left in the dust by China, India and everyone else; without change, we will soon become the offshoot of another empire.

Other reforms:
Start a national conversation about rejoining the EU single market, which would give us frictionless access to the vast economy on our doorstep and wouldn’t, in itself, negate the referendum result. Pledge to spend 3 per cent of GDP on defence, immediately. Talk up the achievements of Britain, because we have a proud history and it’s a catastrophe that so many children are being taught to wallow in misplaced guilt. Tackle benefit fraud and rethink energy strategy — we need more nuclear power stations, which have been resisted for decades by scare stories and deluded green activism.

Keir, you’ll have heard many Tories saying this is a good election to lose, given the bleakness of the future. I’d suggest there has never been a more important time to be in power. Britain is snookered by its own neurosis, held back by cowardice and corruption, politicians preferring gimmicks and culture war bullshit to the rational change we need.

Labour will fail if it is incrementalist. Only courage can save us now."

now lets see the open letter to sunak from his own party .

Pak it in Whups,

they got a tankin tom .

Open letter to the Tories from me
Over the last 14 years you've ruined every aspect of this country to line the pockets of your millionaire friends you should all hang your heads in shame

H M...

while all the time sticking it to the general public with severe cuts to public services , the NHS , councils & anything else that,s public while using public funds for their own ends & white elephants like hs2 , & ppe vips like baroness mony .

Whupsy

Y have yoo not read the letter ?

have yoo.

TTS

He can’t have, he wouldn’t have made the inane comments had he read it. Why on earth he thinks someone should do the same for Rishi Sunak is beyond comprehension.
The current prime minister will be out of office when Labour win the election, he may also lose his seat and be out of politics altogether.

Gaffer

Yes he has done it on a post I made earlier on another topic, he has read the first two words and then answered it, he has got the attention span of a flea

The IQ of a Mollusc ?

No, I don't think it stretches that far.

What is it, ' have a go at whupsy day '?

aw reet he's ' tory blind' and not been skooled as well as me n thee but, He's a white, English born, working class, British passport holder with misled believes in futebaw and we should not hold this against him because, that is prejudice and racist,

if a bird had your brain 1stroke it would fly backwards . wot do i want to spend my time pandering to the likes of false facts gaffer for ? . and it,s a bit rich coming from you tonker with 2 failed business,s under your belt . unfortunately tom this sites full of racists .

Whupsy

If yoo are taking part in a topic on a fourm, the least you could do is read the topics, even if every answer yoo give is the same i.e. "I hate Tories" or "Thatcher was a Cow" or "I love Scargill" and "Joe Gormley was Kool" try thinking about something else for a change

He won't be saying Joe gormley was kool

and YOO putting pics of thatcher on the miners blog with I LOVE THATCHER on it ? .