Another quote in context for 23rd June 2025

Our present Prime Minister has clearly absorbed some of the lessons of Blair's New Labour. 

Sadly there is one of New Labour's messages which he was happy to parrot before the 2024 election but has completely ignored while in government - that if tax rates are too high you will harm the ability of business to invest and the incentives for people to work hard and save.

There is a serious rival to Margaret Thatcher's comment about society which I quoted last week for a British political quote which is nearly always taken out of context, destroying much of it's meaning.

It is easy to find Lord Mandelson's quote about New Labour being "intensely relaxed" about people being "filthy rich."

It is much, much harder to find any reference to his next seven words - "as long as they pay their taxes."

But those words are absolutely critical, because what Mandelson got - and Rachel Reeves clearly doesn't - is that if you really want to get lots of tax revenue to fund the NHS, schools, decent social care - then you should leave people and businesses enough to save, invest and to have incentives to work.

 


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