While David Cameron visited India, Ed Miliband used the recess to make a pilgrimage to social democratic Europe. Accompanied by shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander and his chief consigliere Stewart Wood, Miliband held meetings with Denmark’s Social Democrat prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt (who is married to Neil Kinnock’s son, Stephen) and the leaders of Labour’s Dutch and Swedish sister parties.
Having stated that greater income equality should be an “explicit goal” of a Labour government, Miliband believes that the UK has much to learn from Sweden and Denmark, the most equal countries in the developed world. He has expressed particular admiration for Sweden’s system of universal childcare, the policy credited with enabling its impressive levels of female employment. More than 80 per cent of Swedish mothers work, compared with just 67 per cent in the UK. In a nod to this achievement, Miliband tweeted during his visit: “Just arriving at Swedish Parliament building, passing two Swedish fathers with pushchairs. Scandinavian scene.”
But one thing the Labour leader doesn’t think we should import from the Nordic countries are their tax rates. In an interview with Bloomberg (which is worth reading in full), he said:
There are some lessons you can learn, and some things that are different. They’ve always had a tradition of significantly higher tax and spending, which we don’t have in Britain and aren’t going to have in Britain. We’ve said that we want tax cuts for low and middle income families. That’s a sign of a fairer tax system; it’s not about higher taxes.
Miliband’s words suggest that while a Labour government would increase taxes on the wealthy (as well as proposing a mansion tax, the party is considering reintroducing the 50p rate), it would not significantly increase the overall tax burden. Rather than traditional tax and spend, Miliband will look to predistributive measures such as the living wage, curbs on predatory energy and rail companies and universal childcare to combat inequality.
But the question he will need to answer is whether it is possible to fund the party’s priorities – jobs, housing, social care and childcare – without also raising taxes on middle and lower earners. If Labour goes into the 2015 election promising only to make the rich pay more, the Tories will be quick to dust down their “tax bombshell” posters.
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