On the Gimmick Scale, Clegg’s latest act of self-contradiction registers very high.
It must be party conference season. Nick Clegg making statements about an emergency wealth tax, a rather desperate attempt to give the annual festival of Stockholm Syndrome that calls itself the Liberal Democrat Party Conference something to differentiate themselves from the Tory party their Parliamentarians have happily maintained in office.
A wealth tax sounds superficially like the sort of thing that’s designed to get right up the noses of the Tories and to give the Liberal Democrats some sort of radical credibility at a time when Britain’s manifest inequalities – and the ease with which the wealthy avoid their responsibilities – are at the forefront of political debate.
But actually it’s a far less radical policy than it sounds, and one that plays into the hands of the Right. The answer lies in the fact that wealth is hard to calculate – especially in an age of offshoring and…
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The Political Idealist 