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Labour Must Embrace Englishness


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An interesting article.

There's no doubt at all that Labour is dead in Scotland unless it 'embraces Scottishness'.

But how does it do that without siding with independence ?

It's a real conundrum for the north British branch of Labour. Be seen as a 'Unionist' party...the same as the Tories....and have no votes, or embrace Scottish self'determination, and at least recover some credibility.

Fact is, Labour in Scotland made that bed for itself during the referendum campaign, How do they recover from that ?

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An interesting article.

There's no doubt at all that Labour is dead in Scotland unless it 'embraces Scottishness'.

But how does it do that without siding with independence ?

It's a real conundrum for the north British branch of Labour. Be seen as a 'Unionist' party...the same as the Tories....and have no votes, or embrace Scottish self'determination, and at least recover some credibility.

Fact is, Labour in Scotland made that bed for itself during the referendum campaign, How do they recover from that ?

Kezia the Savior had a brainwave a few months ago when addressing English Labour members which went along the lines of ...

"Don't say your going to Scotland, say your going to Edinburgh or Aberdeen instead." :-))

Her argument being that we should forget about being English, Welsh or Scottish and be British instead. Eh, naw !

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It was a daft idea in1999 and it's an even dafter idea now.

The proposal in 1999 was actually to not bother with a 1p CUT in tax. So, not really the same.

If it was actually possible to only levy the increase on the top earners, I'd support this increase. As, I don't believe it actually is possible to do that, I'd not support it as I'm against the folk at the bottom being asked to pay more.

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The proposal in 1999 was actually to not bother with a 1p CUT in tax. So, not really the same.

If it was actually possible to only levy the increase on the top earners, I'd support this increase. As, I don't believe it actually is possible to do that, I'd not support it as I'm against the folk at the bottom being asked to pay more.

In the eyes of tax payers the overall result was going to be the same. They were expecting taxpayers in Scotland to pay more than taxpayers south of the border. That was never going to be a good idea.

You're right the SG doesn't have that power and the "new powers" in April won't give it that power, even if loads of folk, for some reason, seem to think they will.

It probably wouldn't raise a huge amount of extra money anyway, as Scotland has a lower percentage of high earners than England, which kinda tells a story in itself. And higher earners have ways to avoid paying extra income tax if they want to.

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The proposal in 1999 was actually to not bother with a 1p CUT in tax. So, not really the same.

If it was actually possible to only levy the increase on the top earners, I'd support this increase. As, I don't believe it actually is possible to do that, I'd not support it as I'm against the folk at the bottom being asked to pay more.

Rather than the daft rebate idea, reintroducing the 10p starting rate band, which brown abolished, at the same time as cutting basic rate from 22% to 20%, would be help here. Break even was around 17,000, which is still too low but better than 11,000.

We don't have the power to do that either though.

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