Simon T. Kaye

…or, why Bono shouldn’t pay up.

This week, U2 will be headlining at the Glastonbury festival. As expected, rock music purists are debating whether U2 is just too pop; whether this might be another symptom in the festival’s dumbing-down (Snoop Dogg, Beyonce and Jay-Z being among recent headlining artists).

But the musical discussion has been overshadowed by a political one. Art Uncut, a spin-off from the  UK Uncut protest movement which we heard so much about during the tuition fees arguments of late last year, is staging a demonstration against U2. Not because Bono isn’t rock’n'roll enough, but because he – in their view – is dodging his taxes.

I encourage you to read the 3rd June piece about this on the Art Uncut website. Titled “It’s crucial we send a message to Bono that what he is doing is wrong”,  the piece forwards what is now becoming a very familiar argument: that there is a moral obligation to maximise individual tax contributions.

The ‘Bono Pay Up’ Facebook event page now has around 200 registered participants, all of them (presumably) ticket-holders for the expensive Glastonbury event. Perhaps this seems a little meagre, given that around 177,000 people are set to attend the festival. But the overall power of a moral argument against tax-avoidance has gathered massive support elsewhere, mixed well into a generally politics-flavoured cocktail of state spending cuts opposition and distaste for specific coalition reforms. Protests and sit-ins at Fortnum & Mason, Topshop and the like have attracted news headlines and big-name support from the likes of the Guardian‘s Polly Toynbee.

Let’s run through the ‘uncut’ argument.

1. State spending cuts are bad, and will undermine valued services which are best provided by the state.
2. Budget deficits, like the UK’s annual £170 billion debt rate, are also bad. It is right to try and reduce national debt and the spending deficit.
3. Raising taxes is not always good, though preferable to reductions in public spending.
4. How then do we plug the deficit, without reducing spending or raising taxes too much? Simple: we force rich companies and individuals to stop avoiding their taxes.

On the face of it, this is a powerful, practical ‘everyone wins’ argument. Congratulations should be offered to UK Uncut and its spin-off campaigns for bringing their agenda into the public eye through the targeting of a few case-studies. Bono and U2 are just the latest example of this.

So what’s the problem? Let’s dig down into the case against Bono and U2.

1. We are not morally or legally obliged to maximise our tax contributions.

I would even view this as a human right. We have the human right to act rationally wherever such action is legal. Minimising our tax contribution is always rational – particularly, in fact, for the very rich, as they are far less likely to need state support at some later point.

Being a multinational company or rich individual and earning a lot of money shouldn’t change this. Human rights aren’t human rights if they stop applying to you over a certain income threshold. Put it another way: at what point does a state gain the remit to delimit human rationality?

This is not to say that civil society shouldn’t be concerned with encouraging selfless, generous, charitable and social behaviours. But Bono surely ticks a lot of these boxes independently, as we shall see below.

2. Ireland is not a ‘developing country’…

…not in the sense that this term is usually understood, anyway. Art Uncut argues:

… [T]ax issues are crucial to development. Christian Aid estimates that developing countries lose $160bn annually, more than the global aid budget, thanks to unscrupulous multinational companies dodging tax. If we want poor countries to become richer, we need to adopt an ethical approach to taxation. It’s clear that U2 take anything but an ethical approach to taxation.

Even allowing this assertion – that developing countries are often screwed by tax-dodging multinationals – cannot help in the case of U2 and Ireland. Ireland is a highly developed and economically modern country.

3. Why should Bono trust Ireland with his money?

There is a reason, after all, why Ireland is now having to embark on a significant austerity programme. As a state, Ireland has hardly demonstrated fiscal prudence.

Irish spending policies contributed to a landmark unemployment rate and the country’s first recession since the 1980s. When the financial crisis occurred, the cost of bank-bailouts contributed to an already-vast deficit. Eventually, the EU and IMF stepped in, and other countries lent fiscal support to Ireland.

Perhaps Bono wouldn’t agree with the spending priorities of the Irish state. Perhaps he didn’t agree with the largely ineffective 40 billion Euro stimulus package, or the policy of buying out failing banks with their toxic credit. By the time of the 2008 crisis, U2 was already tax-resident in a different country; this was both legal and rational and, as an internationally successful band, not particularly strange either.

4. What if Bono spends his money more wisely and charitably anyway?

As the Art Uncut article states,

Bono presents himself as someone who cares deeply about development.

This is putting it mildly. U2′s philanthropy is near-legendary. The band has spent more than a decade (perhaps ironically) campaigning on third-world debt. Bono co-organised the Live 8 charity concert project. He is a founder of the Product Red charity brand campaign. He has his own charity – the One Foundation. This and other work represents millions of pounds of charitable contributions, on top of robust political activism.

I’m not a particular U2 fan, and there may be many good reasons to arch an eyebrow at some of Bono’s posturing, or question the effectiveness or sensibility of his approach. But to suggest that Bono is money-grubbing seems decidedly churlish.

Indeed, if Bono is choosing to reduce his contribution to one or another state infrastructure, and then pumps what surely amounts to more than the difference into charitable projects, and he chooses to do so legally, who has a moral basis for questioning his actions or attacking his civic sensibilities?

To conclude…

I suppose the broader point is that it would seem peculiarly trusting, even naive, if people imagined that in all cases the state they happen to live in is better placed to dispose of their money with wisdom. Yet to volunteer taxes – to offer, as it were, additional taxes, above those that are legally required – would be exactly the same as minimising personal disposable wealth. It would be an admission of incompetence, perhaps, or a wholesale acceptance of the idea that the state knows best.

Surely, and especially in the aftermath of the last few years, nobody actually still thinks this way?

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is justly getting glowing notices in every Parliamentary sketch column in the papers today. I’m thrilled to see someone whom I’ve long suspected is the most talented MP in Westminster picking up some recognition.

Otherwise known as one of the central negotiators and architects of an extremely favourable coalition agreement, David Laws is now cementing his reputation as possibly the only man who can peddle the fiscal pain of the coming years and keep everyone on-board.

Here, theatre poster style, is the praise from the broadsheets:

“A dazzling debut” ****

-Simon Carr, The Independent

“…seeing off the other side with contempt and contumely” ****

-Simon Hoggart, The Guardian

“A star is born” *****

-Ann Treneman, The Times

“The Chief Secretary displayed a calm mastery of his brief: clever without being clever-clever, concise without sounding glib, self-assured without looking arrogant.” *****

- The Daily Telegraph

It’s all recorded as a 45-minute session on the BBC. Alastair Darling opens in an excitable way, which I wasn’t entirely sure was possible for him. Do watch it, I promise you won’t be bored. Here’s the link.

I’ve scribbled a bit more over at First Drafts, Prospect Magazine’s blog. Mostly to do with Disraeli’s failed ambition to form a government with Gladstone and his angry clique of free-trading “Peelites” in 1852: has David Cameron simply succeeded where Disraeli failed?

Take a look here.

Here’s a wee excerpt:

He [Disraeli] seemed to see that coalitions indicate a recognition that differing, conflicting ideas can be equally valid. In both cases he was able to play the hand he was dealt as if it were the one he had been hoping for all along: one trait that Cameron really can claim to share.

Electoral reform, improbably enough, is now at the heart of everything. This is the long-discussed ‘dream scenario’ for the Liberal Democrats, and of course they’re terrified by it, even as Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, David Laws & co. expertly manoeuvre us into the ideal equidistant central position for the last day or so of negotiations. The excellence of David Laws’ “Seven Rules” for coalition-bargaining cannot be underestimated here.

Yesterday, Gordon Brown launched his dramatic final gambit – he sacrificed his own political career so as to increase the likelihood of a fourth parliamentary term dominated by Labour politicians. Regardless of whether this actually works, I rather suspect that Brown has secured a spot in the history books (as well as a total tenure as PM which longer than that of James Callaghan) thanks to the gentle levering from power which Nick Clegg has done so carefully over the last few weeks. We all knew Brown was going – and he used his career as a weapon.

The Tories’ response revealed for the first time the deeper outline of the deal that is taking shape between themselves and the Liberal Democrats. They have taken their common ground on environment, education and civil liberties. The Lib Dems appear to have made the large-scale concession that cuts to the deficit must begin this year, rather than next year. I can only presume that a similar concession has been worked out on immigration, as David Cameron will surely face internal revolt if he doesn’t manage to cap non-EU immigration. Issues pertaining to the EU and Trident renewal must, quite rightly, have been put on the back-burner for now.

In return for these concessions, the Liberal Democrats seem to have got their tax proposals accepted, which is a significant victory, and have also picked up, after yesterday’s Corbomite Manoeuvre, assurance of a free vote on a referendum on electoral reform to the Alternative Vote System, along with the introduction of fixed-term parliaments.

However, there is a third plank to the Conservatives’ interest in electoral reform, and it is this third plank which has spooked Labour out of wanting what must otherwise seem like an appealing term as a strong opposition party with the prospect of powerful renewal under a new leader. The Conservatives will almost certainly make radical constituency boundary changes before the next general election. By equalising the size (in terms of population) of every constituency, they will effectively destroy the source of Labour’s strength. In 2005, their handsome majority of Commons seats only existed in Scotland and Wales. This year, they kept a better grip on their core seats than many expected, but were still wholly defeated by the Conservatives in England alone. The Scottish and Welsh constituencies tend to be less populous. The great worry in the high command is that, if these changes come in, Labour would have to win the next election in England as well: no mean feat.

Scratching out a (probably) unstable alliance with the Lib Dems is therefore perceived to be Labour’s last hope before a generation in the wilderness. This may be completely wrong – the next government is sure to be pretty unpopular as it deals with the deficit and Labour could revel in chastising the Conservatives and Lib Dems together. But the electoral mathematics gets very sticky indeed with the regulation of constituency size. The tories have clearly decided that they can afford AV as a trade-off with this advantage over Labour.

It’s obviously incredibly couragous of me (in the suicidal Yes, Minister sense) to stick my head above the parapet with anything that looks like a public prediction of the outcome of this election. But here are a few things that I think aren’t being included in the debates – specifically, some reasons why (despite the predictions of most Men Behind The Polls) Cameron’s Tories might not get their outright majority on May 6th.

1. The Liberal Democrats will hold on in the South

I’ve obviously got an interest which doesn’t need to be declared here, but all the same. Uniform swing predictions are absolutely useless when talking about the Lib Dem/Tory marginals in the South of England. I had the pleasure of helping out in Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake’s south London constituency of Carshalton and Wallington. The figures suggest that this place is on an electoral knife-edge, and the seat is high on the Tories’ target list. But local people are big fans of Tom Brake, who happens to be an incredibly hard-working MP, one of the very few who came out of the expenses scandal looking like a saint, and also happens to be rather good at his job. In other words, I’d still put my money on Tom holding on (at pretty good odds, but anyway). Seat-by-seat, I think the Lib Dems are going to hold on rather well in the south – better, that is, than many predictions suggest. And this means that the Tories will have to do all the better in places where, traditionally, they tend to struggle to attract votes – places like…

2. The North

People are talking a lot right now about how the Conservatives have ‘won’ the first week of campaigning. Perhaps they have – they’ve seemed to control the agenda, at least. But all Labour really needs to do at this point is look like a tenable government. If they achieve the appearance of anything like a votable or supportable political force, then the electoral hill the Tories must climb in the North of England turns into a mountain. And I’d argue that the first week of campaigning has at the very least shown Labour to be competitive in this minimal way. The credibility gap has been bridged. By a similar token, the Tory ‘coup’ of getting into bed with apparently every single businessman in the country in the NI debate could backfire badly beyond the South. They’re publishing an endorsement from the former head of Meryll Lynch, for crying out loud. Have we forgotten about the financial crisis already?

3. Labour gets the credit for escaping the recession

It’s been little reported, but a number of polls have shown that a healthy majority of British people thank Brown, Darling et al. for fixing the economy. It’s a pretty simple rule of electoral analysis, actually: the sitting government always gets blamed for a bad economy, the sitting government always gets rewarded for a bouyant one. We can explain the majority of all electoral outcomes in history by pointing to the personal finantial situation of the average voting citizen, and frankly things could be a lot worse for Labour in this regard. Cameron may find himself having to explain why he opposed (and opposes) many of the measures which appear to have done the trick, whether or not this line of questioning is fair.

4. Brown could win the debates

Don’t laugh, it’s perfectly possible. I’ve just been discussing this with a friend who suspects that Brown will simply look too uncharismatic and ponderous and dull next to Clegg and Cameron, but I have my doubts. Surely Cameron will have the greatest expectations heaped upon his shoulders? In the US, where these debates are not novel at all, the Democrat and Republican political machines have become adept in the art of ‘expectations management’: minimise the general expectation of your guy’s performance as much as possible, and then any kind of success will have a strong effect. Woe unto the candidate who is expected to perform brilliantly and merely performs well. Cameron is this candidate, and for all his preparation, I think he does rather better in the direct, adversarial type of debate that we see in PMQs every week. Brown will be fine in the carefully clinical, rules-driven encounters that people will actually watch. Never underestimate the pursuasive strength of a statistic. Brown likes statistics.

Of course, the biggest opportunity in the debate belongs to Clegg, and he may very well shine. But anybody ‘winning’ who isn’t Cameron will be a disaster for the Conservative campaign. My friend points out that the narratives are pre-set: the newspapers and commentators have probably already decided who won these debates. But this is a chance to talk directly to voters, and get a precious thirty seconds of speech into the news: very hard to argue with.

Last note – Just so you know, my long-promised, long-delayed political science analysis of AV voting reforms will emerge soon.

I’ve been enjoying the big online argument over Britain’s NHS. Fox News have thrown around the idea that it lets terrorists into the country. CNN has a pretty good overview of how everyone’s been responding to the US Republicans’ claim that the system is “Orwellian”. And the #welovethenhs tag trundles away on Twitter.

Complaining about the NHS is pretty habitual in practically every British person that I know. “I can’t believe I had to wait thirteen weeks to have my _ looked at!”, “You won’t believe how long I was waiting in Accident and Emergency and then they didn’t even do anything!”, “It’s ridiculous how our hospitals have become home to ‘superbugs’ – why can’t they just keep the places clean?”, and so on.

What most people don’t do is make the outright principled stand – they don’t object philosophically or ideologically to the cost of the NHS, the idea of living in each other’s pockets, or the loss of personal responsibility for health.

(Erm, we also don’t think the NHS lets terrorists in.)

So I’ve always concluded that most Brits want socialised health care, but they want it to be better than it is right now. What’s fascinating about the ongoing debate is that so many people seem to be leaping to the NHS’s defence completely unequivocally.

Well, let’s be measured about all of this. As a Brit by birth, I’ve used the NHS many times. So here is a FAQ:

Does the NHS provide an overall good standard of medical care? Absolutely. It works. People get treated, and it’s absolutely free at the point of use. I usually come away satisfied. Just not always.

Is that standard as high as in a privatised health system? Not at the top, but it’s far better for folks at the bottom of the chain. By the way, in the UK, people who want to can take out private health insurance and seek private aid, so there isn’t a total monopoly.

Is the NHS a massive, creaking bureaucratic behemoth? Oh lord, yes. The NHS is plagued by wastefulness, red tape and is swarming with money- and time-wasting bureaucracy. Hopefully this can be reformed.

Do most people put more money into the system through tax than they’re ever likely to get back through treatment? Of course. If you don’t like that, you don’t want socialised…. well, anything. Apart from maybe education.

Is it OK to be philosophically opposed to nationalised health care? Yes. It does work, it’s about a million miles from being perfect, but if you’re fundamentally opposed to the idea of distributing the personal responsibility for one’s own wellbeing, then you should feel free to hate the NHS.

As the chief legacy of Clement Attlee’s post-war reforming government, the NHS was originally intended to form the cornerstone of a projected ‘Socialist Republic of Great Britain’. Clearly, this never happened. But the idea was so popular and so effective that the NHS is absolutely at the heart of the UK’s version of the ‘post-war settlement.’

It’s an assumed fact of life here: people don’t think to oppose the NHS on any fundamental level any more. The single biggest compromise to universally socialised medicine in the NHS took place months after the service was inaugurated, with the introduction of prescription charges. Since then, not even Maggie Thatcher has found the time to repeal the key parts of our health care system.

Speaking for myself, I find it hard to escape the usefulness and ‘fairness’ of this system (especially when it has treated me well, as it has for the last little while).

But would I institute such an establishment again, today, if I had the choice? Probably not.

The fact of socialised health care legitimises the worst instances of government nannying. We are now nagged and scolded on a daily basis over the latest health fads, based on one or two studies somewhere in some department of medicine, and often quickly withdrawn when competing evidence is produced. We eat too much salt, we don’t eat enough vitamin C, we need certain foods, a certain lifestyle. I don’t think government should get involved with the way people live their lives. But when everyone else pays for your own health problems the responsibility for them becomes impersonal. Your weight, your habits and your choices become everybody’s business.

The NHS is unweildy, but willing; it works in earnest, but doesn’t always deliver perfect healthcare. No system can. So if you’re going to oppose the NHS, do it properly, from the ground up: do it because you think it’s a signpost on the road to decreased freedom. Everything else is just noise.

There’s plenty of speculation about over just what has gotten into the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Alistair Darling. He’s been delivering pithy, bullish statements – not something one expects after his immensely dull Budget day – to the effect that Labour are dead in the water and the Economy’s in much the same state.

Clearly this isn’t news to anybody. But if anything, Darling seems to be overstating the problem, over-exaggerating the peril (at least in terms of the economy). Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the ructions of the 1970s Oil Shock will be forgiven for raising their eyebrows at claims like “arguably the worst slump for 60 years”.

A certain brand of economist has been arguing for a little while now that we are witnessing the self-correction of the Market, a natural and belated adaptation to the real price of key resources. However we stand on that debate, confusion has to reign over Alistair Darling’s change of tack. There are a few theories floating around, but as I haven’t really encountered them set out properly anywhere else- here’s MY take.

1. This is a planned move. Ignore the Times when it says that the government wasn’t expecting Darling’s interviews to cut the way they did. If there’s an iota of journalistic integrity behind such stories, then the explanation probably lies in an usually well rehearsed bit of story-management. There’s been silence from Labour throughout the summer recess – the relatively slow news days where someone looking to cause a stink might have had the agenda to themselves, or given Gordon Brown the last nudge needed to topple him after his electoral setbacks. But instead everyone waited, took a breath while the smoke cleared, and planned.

2. This is what the American media might call Expectations Management. Scare people senseless about the economy, and they might just be pleased when we manage to keep our collective chins above water after all. Especially if it looks even slightly attributable to the inevitable raft of economic measures the government is set to deliver over the coming weeks.

3. By the same token, tell Labour that things aren’t merely as awful as they seemed after Glasgow East. They are, in fact, uniformly terrible. The Chancellor, Brown’s political glove-puppet, is even breaking free. And then – a little while later – a wee bounce in the polls. A decent conference season. Some well-received new policies (see above). Labour’s grassroots expect the worst – and they’re happy to be merely disappointed.

4. Best of all, let’s emphasise just how bad things can get. Let’s blow it up. Because while Labour might not benefit in the ways suggested above, the Tories may not butter any parsnips as a result either. The gamble here is that with truly, genuinely difficult times on the horizon, the public is far more likely to invest in the party that delivered them ten years of solid growth and stability than the young and cock-sure Conservatives. When things get tough, the tough get conservative – that’s with a small ‘c’ – and a change of government might be the last thing on people’s minds if they’re properly convinced that the apocalypse is coming.

5. Of course, for all this wonderful street theatre to work (and it has to be theatre to pull me away from the US elections just now), like any decent tragedy-play, we must have a death. Be it murder most foul or the honourable fall upon the sword, most commentators smell a reshuffle, and with his unguarded comments, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Mr Darling is the one to have drawn the short straw, and go out in a blaze of doom-mongering glory. 

Of course, none of the above is anything like certain. It might be that Darling, friends as he is with Gordon, will not be moved so easily; though if I’m wrong and his was and is a genuine gaffe, it’s hard to imagine him holding on past Christmas.

But if a change of tactics was ever called for, then it was called for just prior to the summer break. Perhaps we’re seeing the start of that right now.