The things you just can’t say

You hear the phrase ‘you just can’t say anything any more’ a lot. Most often in comments from people parodying the kind of people they imagine say ‘you just can’t say anything any more,’ but second most often from people who have just said something horrid and been criticised for it. Obviously what they actually mean is ‘you can’t say anything without people responding and questioning it any more,’ which is a very different complaint.

But I do think there are some things that it appears certain people can not say. Here’s one: ‘In the UK we need to raise taxes.’

That really shouldn’t be a controversial statement. We spent a shedload* during Covid and in response to Brexit. We were already pretty broke after the 2008 financial crisis, and governments since then have pursued different versions of austerity to the point where our basic day-to-day lived experiences tell us that there is really nothing left to cut. Ambulances take ages to come. Police are acting as a mental health emergency service. Local councils are going bankrupt. If we want our public services to function better they have to be paid for.

And I can say that, but we seem to have created a politics where politicians can’t. We’ve tarred the Labour party, in particular, with the label of being financially irresponsible, which means that successive Labour leaders feel bound to go into each new election cycle with a promise not to raise taxes. Which is insane. Tax is pretty much the main lever the government has control of to do… well anything. Nothing else promised in a manifesto means anything if it’s accompanied by a promise that takes the main option for paying for it out of play before the party is even in government.

We also need tax reform. Too many forms of UK taxation (pretty much all of them apart from good old income tax) aren’t properly progressive and don’t proportionally hit those who can most afford to pay, but tax reform isn’t a sexy policy, and raising taxes is never going to be an instinctively popular one. Which means that we are running a whole political system where our politicians permanently have one hand tied behind the back because they can’t say the thing they must all know to be true. To fund functioning services they need to raise more money.

And functioning public services save the country – and individuals – money long term. A well run, prompt health service saves sick days and benefits payments. It keeps people in work and earning. A well-funded police service reduces crime. A properly functioning prison and probation service reduces reoffending, which saves the country money and and individuals pain.

But so long as we have a media, and a public, who refuse to hear unpleasant things – like ‘this is likely to require tax increases’ – then none of those improvements are going to happen. And we’ve created a media landscape where a lot of people only consume ‘news’ and opinion that tell them things they want to hear, so telling people things they don’t want to hear is seen as electoral insanity. And so here we are trapped, with a struggling public services and nothing but anger to fix them with.

And that’s today’s post. I did write one last week, but I didn’t post it. It felt too much like shouting into the void. But this week I’m back, whispering quietly into the void, sort of tapping the void on the shoulder and muttering ‘I’m sorry. Would you mind awfully taking a look at this?’ I hope the void enjoys it.

*technical ecomonics term there

While you’re here, making a living through writing is super tricky right now. Authors’ incomes are falling, and bills very much are not, so if you are able and you enjoy what I write it would be lovely if you could drop me a couple of quid by way of acknowledgement or thanks. I believe people generally say ‘buy me a coffee’ but I don’t like coffee and I’m lactose intolerant. So buy me a soya milk hot chocolate?