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The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog

In this week's New Statesman: Who Owns Britain?

The coming battle over land and property | John Pilger: Chile’s corrupt elite | The return of Alan B’Stard

By George Eaton Published 14 October 2010 11:58

Cover

In this week's New Statesman, we look at the coming battle over land and property and reveal who really owns Britain. In our cover story, the NS's editor, Jason Cowley, argues for shifting the tax burden from earned to unearned income (property sales, inheritance, land ownership) and says land reform must become a convulsive political issue once more.

Elsewhere, as the world focuses on the Chilean mine rescue, John Pilger exposes the political and economic abuse that continues to blight the country, Mehdi Hasan warns Ed Miliband not to be defined by his enemies and John McTernan, formerly Tony Blair's political secretary, puts the Blairite case for Labour's new leader.

Also this week, Jonathan Powell explains what today's politicians can learn from Machiavelli, David Blanchflower warns that the Tories' figures still don't add up and we launch a caustic new column from the "New New Statesman", Alan B'Stard.

All this, plus Kevin Maguire's Commons Confidential, Laurie Penny on the corporate attempt to cash in on cancer and Ryan Gilbey on the dark history of Facebook.

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6 comments

Fri, 2010-10-15 07:47 — brad evans

How about selling off redundant/unused/underused church property while disestablishing the church? Lots of extra land and buildings that would bring in lots of money.

Thu, 2010-10-14 12:56 — Alex weir (not verified)

Zimbabwe is a country with a huge government foreign debt. The head of state has vast personal wealth which is capable of paying off this government debt. Few british would be against a move to have this head of state sell his assets to pay off his country s debt. But. Hang on. Britain is also a country with a huge government foreign debt. And a head of state whose personal wealth is capable of paying off this debt. So which of these 2 heads of state will step forward first to do a patriotic deed? Alex weir. Harare

Thu, 2010-10-14 13:01 — Gordon Comstock

Excellent proposition. Get rid of the monarchy and reduce or pay off the UK's debt in one move. I commend this to the populace.

Thu, 2010-10-14 13:05 — swatantra nandanwar

An excellent point. Selling off The Queen the Monarchy and its lands would probably halve the debt in 4 years, and there would be no need to raise VAT to 20%. By privatising the Monarchy and diversifying it to all the vacant thrones in Europe, rather like Queen Victoria, would mean that Britain maintains its influence where it matters.

Thu, 2010-10-14 16:52 — David Vinter (not verified)

I am completely neutral about the assets of Royalty. But I can say this, if you put a huge quantity of any asset on the market quickly, its value will fall. You could give the poor an acre each, but what would they do with it? 90% of urbanites wouldn't want to go near it,and farmwork is hard, often cold and wet!
The big Scottish estates are mostly very poor land, that's why they are only any good for deer. Who fancies a housing estate on the top of Ben Nevis?
The big farms are needed for food, as the UK can only feed 55% of its population, and food is getting shorter, but humans will keep on breeding. There is not a snowball in hells chance of the earth feeding 9 billion!

Thu, 2010-10-14 18:34 — E.J.Dodson

No less a stateman than Churchill once sang the 'land song' against landed privilege in Britain. Whether Churchill had studied Adam Smith, the Physiocrats or Ricardo I do not know. His early political attachment to liberal principles resulted in a number of remarkable speeches on the land question in 1909. They are remarkable for their straightforward presentation of the reasons why citizens of Britain endured economic deprivation under the weight of a landed aristocracy. Britain, as all social democracies, traveled down a tenuous road of mitigation that imposed heavier and heavier taxation on the incomes people earned by producing goods and services, while allowing the landed to take in unearned rents and live off the work of others. Whatever the rental value of land is -- in rural Scotland or downtown London -- rightfully belongs to the community (i.e., to society) and should be collected. What people earn with their labor can then be left untaxed. The income tax can be restructured for simplication and progressivity by exempting all individual incomes up to the national median, then imposing increasing rates of taxation on higher ranges of income (the rates determined during the budgeting process in order to achieve a balanced budget). Combine these several essential reforms and Britain would be on the road to a full employment society.