As the slogan for the Nationwide Building Society goes, "On Your Side". So those who do their daily dealings of a financial nature can assume that their money is secure, isn't going to be drained to any nasty shareholders and that for the savers, returns will be relatively healthy. Laudable.
Let's expand the word "nationwide" metaphorically and then split it into two almost as big words "One Nation". That's the idea pervading the (alleged) thinking in the Labour Party, particularly after that rousing speech given by their apparent leader, Ed Miliband. One nation, where come 2015 under a Labour government, there will be blackouts. Land seizures. Even more borrowing and unworkable schemes because the money will have gone. We are Britain, we certainly can do better than that.
Be under no illusions here, folks, allowing Labour back in will do us irreparable damage. Our fragile growth, albeit growing more robust by the day, will be squandered in a year and by 2017 the country will be at the polling stations once again. Is that what we want? Ed asked his party conference and by wider dint anyone who was remotely interested not in Brighton, if people were better off than they were four years ago? Well four years ago there was still a Labour government and people were miserable. Some will have certainly answered the question in their heads with a tentative "Well, actually...".
Pundits are saying that the next election will focus largely on the cost of living. Certainly that will be uppermost in the minds of many and rightly so. Prices have risen almost every month since May 2010 and the horrible Tories, along with their Lib Dem lackeys have done nothing to abate it. Yet the inflation rate went down recently. The Chancellor froze fuel duty in the Budget and now the supermarkets are cutting their prices at the pump. We agreed an increase in the personal allowance, set to rise again in 2014. That'll help with the cost of living; paying less tax will mean more to spend on the everyday items. Council tax has either been frozen or raised (by most authorities) below inflation and no authority can raise it above 2% without a mandate from local residents.
But to return to Red Ed and his fun-loving band. As I touched upon, he wants to regulate energy prices. An excellent idea, the greedy energy company shareholders fill their pockets and the consumers face a heat-or-eat crisis. So heroic, crusading, on-my-side Ed comes in and says that Labour will pass legislation in 2015 to freeze energy price rises for 20 months. Great! An extra £120 to each bill payer per year, equating to £10 a month or so. For some this will be a drop in the ocean, to others a lifeline. But it comes at a price: government interference. The Government will tell private companies what to do in terms of the prices they set, in a nutshell, price controls. This will extend to the supermarkets and railways as well. Commuters and consumers will cheer initially; policies coming from a compassionate government at last! Of course, but for the supermarkets this will mean a limit on profit being made. Limits on profits mean that their staff and services will start to suffer. The less a company makes, the less it can afford to pay its staff. Less money for the lower-paid = less immediate consumption in the market. Labour will make lower-paid workers worse off in the long term.
Ed claims to be on the side of small businesses. Again, something I could get behind, it's what we do best as a nation. He wants to freeze a business rates hike and reverse a 1% corporation tax cut to fund it. Doing so would be suicide, particularly in terms of the latter. Not cutting the corporation tax will mean that the larger business won't be able to hire any more workers, invest in their operations or just give their staff a pay boost. We also won't be attractive to future investors from overseas wanting a decent place for European operations. If we want to stay ahead in the global race, then we must be able to demonstrate that we're competitive. Labour will price us out of the global market.
Then came the pronouncements on social issues; housing and childcare. An extra 25 hours a week for care-givers in order to accommodate parental working hours. Because recognising marriage in the tax system is just plain wrong, as are any tax cuts. Then there's the land-grab I mentioned earlier. One Nation Ed will ensure that there isn't much nation left to look at not covered by concrete and tarmac. The "new towns" he wishes to build to solve the housing crisis (presumably funded by the repeal of the hated Bedroom "Tax"). Where will they go, please? The Cotswolds? The Chilterns? How about the Yorkshire Dales? How affordable are we talking for the new housing? Will everyone have the right to buy, or is it just renting? Who will be allowed to apply for the new houses; those in employment, or those who only receive housing benefit? Maybe they'll just be for show. Labour will re-entrench socialism.
This is to say nothing of the other hare-brained schemes cooked up at conference. I have given a taste of what could happen in 2015 should we, as a nation, make the wrong choice and elect the wrong man. We all remember how in 13 years Labour ruined us through high-tax, mega-spend policies and the same looks set to happen again.
So on that, I shall finish on another slogan, borrowed from a far-distant General Election campaign OLD LABOUR, OLD DANGER.
