I am reading the Secret Barrister’s first book, I provide a quote,
“In the Crown Court, I have prosecuted many appeals from the magistrates’ court of unrepresented defendants and have lost count of the number of cases where there has been a conviction that is completely wrong in law, or completely wrong in evidence, the fact of which only emerges upon close inspection of the papers. “
The Secret Barrister
If the courts get it so wrong, and when we examine the Labour Parties rules …. …
Those of you following me, know that I have been following the EU’s Conference on the Future of Europe. I have been mainky tracking Citizen’s Panel 2 on Dempocracy and values, but also reviewed ECP 4 and their recommendations on Migration. I have had a brief look at ECP3’s Climate Change and Environment proposals; I looked at these in January and the proposals that made the final plenary will differ.
I made a word cloud of the proposals other than health. Carbon should read carbon reduction, but the generator wouldn’t work with such a long phrase. I have created summary keywords for each proposal, this would be better if I had crowd sourced this allocation stage, but I didn’t.
The Citizen’s panels full proposals are published by the Conference. The panels work in sup groups and so can produce multiple, very similar recommendations.
My highlights are that the panel recommends, the reinforcing of the health care system and the assumption by the EU of competency for health with equal access for all. It also takes a powerful stand for a sustainable energy economy, together with transport system reform: more public transport, particularly buses and trains. …
Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have finally pressed the button on their plans to ‘offshore’ asylum processing, Labour’s Yvette Cooper, labels this shameful, unworkable, unethical & extortionate. The Independent reports on previous countries attempts to ‘offshore’ refugee reception their failure, cost and disgraceful conditions applied to people who have done nothing wrong. It also seems the Government plan to use the military instead of Border Force. This is truly outrageous.
Labour Campaign for Free Movement have called for a demo outside the Home Office tonight.
And some campaigning comrades, have started a petition, Stop Priti Patel’s offshore refugee camps – Ripples
And then there’s those who think it’s a dead cat to distract from the partygate fines. …
Skwawkbox has been reading the new rule book and reports on the new rule (C2.I.4.D/P14) which seeks to protect the expulsion process from judicial interference and a duty of fairness.
D. Neither the principles of natural justice nor the provisions of fairness in Chapter 2, Clause II.8 shall apply to the termination of Party membership pursuant to Chapter 2, Clauses I.4.A and C.
Labour’s Rule book 2022
Chapter 2.II.8 guarantees the right to dignity and respect and a right to be treated fairly by officers of the Party 😊
Clauses 2.I.4.A and C are new rules and create an offence of a proscribed act (A) which are listed in …(B), and the evidence which is deemed to prove these acts (C). The acts are related to standing against the Labour Party, or pursuing a vexatious law case against the Party.
It seems to me that the rule may have the opposite effect to its design.
The exclusion of the right to natural justice is only applicable to auto-exclusion on the basis of grounds listed in C2.I.4.B; these do not include being a member of a proscribed group, nor committing the acts defined by NEC resolution proscribing them such as selling a newspaper, writing for it or being interviewed by it.
The attempt to exclude the duty of fairness and the language used, while refusing to accept the constraints of the Nolan principles is shocking. It’s so bad that I was asked if it had actually gone through conference, and the answer it has. It was listed in CAC 2 for Conference 21. Conference was asked to debate and pass 37 pages of amendments with 4 hours notice of the text. I have drafted a rule change to prohibit this abuse.
I add, that given the current NEC and General Secretary’s view of the rules, there are only three, (or on Medium) which count.
I wrote a short piece on the potential need for the EU to acquire direct taxation powers which led to me checking how much the UK government raised from income based taxes vs. VAT. The article reproduced some charts from Parliament but I was surprised to discover how low a share of government revenue it now represented. The article was written after the budget, which had not really made an impact in my consciousness; it just seemed ‘meh’ to me. It is however yet another turning of the screw in a largely successful attempt to make the working classes pay for the crisis in national income and wealth facing this country.
John Crace reviews the speech and budget in this article on the Guardian, A mini budget full of lies from Rishi Sunak, the people’s millionaire , and says,
[He can ] deliver a spring statement – AKA a seismic budget in any other year – that offers nothing to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society while sobbing on their behalf. Who can tell the chamber with a straight face that he is committed to cutting taxes even when the Office of Budget Responsibility is saying that the tax burden is set to go up to 36.3% by 2026: the highest level since the 1940s.
John Crace
I recommend you read Crace’s article in full.
It also reports on the budget, in an article by Philip Inman, their economics editor, Rishi Sunak ‘protecting Treasury from inflation at families’ expense’ | Spring statement 2022
Critics of UK chancellor’s spring statement say it prioritises debt reduction and fails to provide support to lower-income households
Philip Inman
This despite the sub-headline concentrates on the macro-economics, reflecting the argument that since the Govt has borrowed on variable interest rate bonds, as inflation kicks in, they argue they need more money to service the debt. The article concludes by observing that inflation may fall, that soaring energy costs are a drag on prosperity, and that the real reason for increasing tax revenues is to be able to give it back in the run-up to an election.
Despite being under pressure to minimise the effects of the cost of living crisis, driven by Brexit and energy cost inflation and help households across the country who are being forced into poverty, all the budget did was announce a cut on fuel duty, Labour are asking for a VAT cut on energy bills, although instructing Ofgem to implement a price cap would be more effective. He also raised the threshold at which people start to pay National Insurance, which is a means of alleviating the fiscal drag created by freezing the tax free allowance.
From Inman’s article, I also note that Sunak has frozen the income tax free relief for the next four years, together with the IHT limits. The effect of this is that before, people could expect the tax free allowance to rise in accordance with inflation, giving them small amounts of extra disposable income, even if they did not get a pay rise. This has now gone. It will also have the effect of raising the share of income tax paid by the low paid.
He also, in contradiction, to the Tories election promise suspended the pension link with earnings for 2022/23 although he claims to be willing to reintroduce it next year. He has also cut the amount the poorest in our society get by clawing back the uplift paid in 2019-2021.
My segue into this piece was the low proportion of government income attributed to Income Tax vs VAT. The House of Commons Library produced a report called, Tax Statistics: an overview, and my previous article reproduces some charts from it while making the point that treating NI as separate category minimises the impact of employee contributions, which are levied at 12% until one begins to pay higher rate tax and allows Income Tax to be described as more progressive than it is. NIC’s also are paid by employer’s and so clarity on corporate contribution to the exchequer is also reduced.
VAT is 20%, for the less well paid more than they pay from Income Tax. This needs to be rebalanced.
I finish with Statista’s charting of the Gini Coefficient over time., which measures the level of income inequality in our society,
We have the lowest social security net in Europe, the lowest pensions and amongst the most strongly regulated Unions. Something’s got to give. …