Local government finance is hardly the most exciting political issue facing Britain
today. But it is one of the most electorally telling. Local taxation affects
everyone and one of the main reasons the Tories are in such a mess is their extraordinarily incompetent experiment with
the poll tax.
The poll tax is unfair, uncollectable and
universally unpopular and it is not surprising that the Tories want to put it
behind them. They had been hoping, however, to do so in a leisurely fashion
after winning an autumn election this year. Instead, the election was postponed
in the face of opinion polls showing that the Tories would not win – and
Michael Heseltine was made to bring forward the council tax legislation. The
council tax bill will be rushed through parliament in time to give the Tories
the option of calling the election before next year's poll tax bills, which are
certain to be massive because of the level of non-payment, drop on to the
nation's doormats. With this in mind, the government has allowed the bare
minimum of parliamentary time for scrutiny of the legislation.
The upshot is that we will be lumbered with a local
government tax which, if marginally less regressive than the poll tax, is
almost as unfair and just as unworkable. The council tax valuation process is laughably arbitrary and
appeals against valuation decisions will overload any conceivable system. The
discount for single-person households is virtually an invitation to tax
avoidance. And the retention of draconian central government capping powers
makes a mockery of the principle of local accountability. Add the patent unfairness
of the banding structure, which means that a family in a suburban semi will
pay the same as one in a country mansion, and the council tax has all the
makings of a disaster. A return to the rates with an improved rebate system, as
Labour has advocated, would have been simpler, fairer and above all infinitely
more practicable.
Facing up to racism
The Conservative Party has never been averse to using
race to win elections: since the fifties, it has consistently stood as the
party that is "toughest on immigration" and most insistent that
minority ethnic groans conform to the "British way of life". The
Asylum Bill, as mean-minded a piece of legislation as any put forward under
Margaret Thatcher, is entirely consistent with the Tory record. So too is the
slimy treatment meted out to Ashok Kumar by the Tories in the Langbaurgh
by-election last week. However much Chris Patten and John Major deny it, the
Tories are playing the race card in the run-up to the general election.
That,
however, is only the start of the problem. If a significant proportion of
voters were not themselves racist, there would be no point in the Tories, or
anyone else, trying to grab votes by playing up race issues. It is quite right
for Labour to deplore the Tories’ tactics, but it would be far better for the
party to spend a little more time and energy developing long-term policies to
combat the racism endemic in British society. A Black Socialist Society within
the party and pledges to tighten up the law on racial discrimination are not
enough.
