Tax Rises For One Nation Is A Good Deal

During Macmillan’s premiership, 300,000 houses were built per year, far exceeding the Labour tally . Specs were lowered , true, but the reason that the Conservative Party were able to attend to immediate need, did not lie in heartlessness .The Labour Party saw social housing as an ideological drive towards a British Marxist utopia , preferring unbuilt palaces to real houses . Macmillan only wanted roofs over heads ,and saw the exercise as a temporary stage towards a property owning . Conservatives may use interventionism then, as long as it is not an end .
The right-to-buy scheme in effect gave a state subsidy to a poverty trapped class, but Labour attacked it through service charges in the housing empires because it offended their collectivist beliefs .These ‘owned’ corners, of some of the countries worst estates ,are incomparably better places to live , cared for a with a civility lost from the wastelands of workless infantilism dependency creates .This was intervention on a huge scale but once it was done the state stepped back . A good model.
By contrast ,Labour flash flood public money has deluged places like Glasgow East only creating male life expectancy far far below the Gaza strip (actually) as low as 50! This represents a historic missed opportunity during decade when government spending has increased by 30% ie about as much as a working mans` income tax . With the cost of housing and tax included , the working population have not benefited from the NICE years , and yet for this sacrifice we still live in a country that looks desperate ( Hence the obsession with crime ) .Labour have not tried to include the disadvantaged ,only to placate them , the included have paid for their folly
On the matrix of new ideas about why what works ,works ,I will have to name check. .Notions of social capital , trust , knowledge and evolved ( not imposed) solutions emerge from Communitarian writing and an infinitely more nuanced vision of man and society than the clunking levers of 20th century socialism .Cameron as ever gets little credit but he is the most intellectual Leader of my political life. The practical keys to encouraging desirable growth ,however ,are freeing access to property and supporting horizontal connectedness, family and civil society .The state is the best positioned agency for enabling measures designed to unblock log jams like the underclass ,so intervention may be required ,but for permanence to develop would defeat the point.
This is partly expressed in welfare/housing policy. It is the deep conviction of all Conservatives that State housing and pocket money are dehumanising evil poisoning the ground from which "society" grows .No conservative however ,would ever advocate theory over people ,which is why Cameron talks about a multi generational project . The version of the Wisconsin scheme is central. It has worked , it can change lives and include many more in mainstream life ( an essential for the nation) What has not yet been admitted is that it is expensive .Assistance channelled through the voluntary sector in this country would have to be on a large scale if there was to be a punitive element which there must be . Otherwise we would soon face a new Poll tax impasse .
Conservatives have been warned that their rage at the pension theft , the tax swindle , will have to wait while structural changes in welfare education and much more take priority . The objective is a country at relative peace from which the state can withdraw down to a level of say 35% of GDP from the 45% we have .
What has Iraq reminded us 0f ? That it is relatively easy to remove one structure , but you have to invest more in helping a better one to be born. If this takes temporary tax rises , then I say it is worth it. We must be One Nation again