Ditch Dodgy Dave and the whole dodgy system
Cameron has tried – but failed – to distance himself from the Panama papers, says Left Unity Principal Speaker, Felicity Dowling.
The recent revelations and admissions show that he has dissembled the sources of his wealth. He has profited from offshore banking, inheritance tax management and the tax avoidance schemes that are the preserve of the very rich. He has criticised others for tax evasion but now the mask has slipped and his hypocrisy is exposed. He is revealed for what he is: both a beneficiary and an agent of extreme class privilege. And while profiting himself he has driven forward the most savage attacks on working people and the poorest in our society.
The Panama papers show clearly that offshore banking and the complex system of tax evasion have been carefully constructed by the very rich and their political representatives. They have been developed and established over years, in law and in tax regulation. And it is not something confined to corrupt individuals and regimes elsewhere – as some would have us believe. Britain is at the very heart of it: the whole legislative framework of the Virgin Isles, laws in the Channel Islands and in the Isle of Man and more. Tax minimisation lawyers have been “consulted” by HMRC while tax collection employees have been reduced in numbers.
Offshore banking, inheritance tax management and tax evasion schemes for the very rich are part of a complex and major project developed over years. Our ruling class has put far more effort into this than into creating and building modern industry in this country.
It’s not just one law for the rich but a whole complex construction of laws – holding, managing, investing and hiding extreme wealth are rarely covered in popular news, unlike so-called benefit fraud. The huge wealth of this country – held by so few – exposes the total lie of austerity. In truth, there is plenty of money and it needs to be distributed fairly across society. Austerity is a political fraud not an economic necessity.
The wealth is there and tax evasion and avoidance account for far more of it than the ‘deficit’. Why should the NHS go short? Why should people have to use food banks? Why should people lose essential mobility cars? “There is no alternative”? Far from it!
Cameron is at the heart of a multi-generational project, to protect the privileges of wealth. Meanwhile his government sets the benefits cap to make tens of thousands of families with children homeless. It’s time to put an end to this duplicity and extortion, wreaked upon the people of Britain. Of course there is more to it than Cameron: a whole rotten class system stands with him and behind him, but he has to go. It’s the first step towards acknowledging that Britain needs an alternative. Cameron has to go.
Close tax loopholes, end austerity
March with the People’s Assembly this Saturday to defend Health, Homes, Jobs and Education. See event details. If you can help Left Unity distribute broadsheets and placards on the march please contact Andrew on 07939 242229 or info@leftunity.org
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4 responses to “Ditch Dodgy Dave and the whole dodgy system”
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This statement does not sufficiently connect tax dodging to austerity. If wealth is flowing to the rich and they refuse to pay tax on it, then it means permanent austerity for society as governments are starved of tax revenue. While the apologists for the rich claim they pay an outsize share of income tax, what is ignored is national insurance, the reduction in corporate tax, as well as all the indirect taxes which fall most heavily on the lower paid.
Totally agree Dirty Dave has to go !
Of course he has to go. But more importantly the whole bunch and the system need to be overthrown.
Even if we can Ditch Dodgy Dave, we’ll still be Betrayed and Bothered by Barmy Boris – Not to mention betrayed, and sold out, by the Labour Party, financed and run by Len McCluskey and the Unite & GMB unions, with their military Keynesian, ‘fight-for-the-right-to-work-to-kill-millions-of-people-and-destroy-the-planet’ policies that are, along with with the warmongering US neocon, military-industrial-complex- & NATO-driven policies, driving us inexorably towards nuclear annihilation.
The only thing we can do, in these circumstances, is to have a constitutionally (non-Leninist) libertarian ecosocialist organisation that can contest elections, without falling for the false belief that there is a capitalist, parliamentary, road to socialism, to expose truths and suggest politically viable alternatives.
(Misquoting Rosa Luxemburg) It will have to be ‘ecosocialism or barbarism’. I don’t know of any other possible alternative.