Do Labour Really Want to Form a Government?
The Today programme was looking at the policy Labour is proposing to increase worker shareholding in companies this morning. Basically all listed companies in the UK with over 250 employees would be required to give 10% of their shares over to a trust which would redistribute the dividends to workers in the company up to a maximum of £500 per worker with anything above that going to the government.
The aim of the policy seems worthy but it was cooly picked apart on the radio this morning by a representative of one of the business industry associations. The seemingly benign proposal is essentially an extra 10% on corporate tax that will actually deliver little extra to workers at the affected companies. The example of Shell was given. It would require them to pay £1.2billion (!) per annum to the government. Because most of their staff work overseas only a tiny proportion of that would be paid to workers at the company. If being listed in the UK means there is effectively a 10% tax on your global earnings there would be a massive rush to delist from the UK stock market or cut the number of your UK employees to below the threshold. Either way the impact on jobs and the economy would be catastrophic.
An A Level economics student could have told the Labour party that so it must be assumed that they know the policy is totally unimplementable and that therefore it is designed to appeal to the conference and their membership rather than their electorate.
Why then are Labour making it such a key part of their strategy to force an election when they are proposing policies that will make them unelectable? If there was an election the key factor in deciding which way to vote for me would be which party made Brexit less likely. This does still to be Labour but they seem to be going out of their way to make the choice a lot harder than it should be!
Gordon Southwell ● 2039d2 Comments