\n<\/p>\n
The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, is offering voters \u201cunicorns\u201d and Labour must confront his \u201cfantasy\u201d solutions such as the idea that a wealth tax would fix the public finances, according to the Fabian Society\u2019s general secretary, Joe Dromey.<\/p>\n
Much of the government\u2019s fire is trained on Nigel Farage. But in an end-of-year interview, the head of Labour\u2019s internal thinktank urges his party to take on the \u201ctwin populisms\u201d of Reform and Polanski.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got the populism of the left in Polanski. And the populism of the right in Farage. Their politics are very different but both of them are pushing simplistic solutions to challenging problems that just don\u2019t stand up to scrutiny,\u201d he says. \u201cOne is offering you a unicorn, the other\u2019s peddling hatred, and we need to expose that.\u201d<\/p>\n
A wealth tax \u2013 an annual levy on the assets of the super-rich, which Polanski strongly backs \u2013 \u201cwon\u2019t solve the kind of fiscal challenge that we face,\u201d Dromey says. \u201cWe won\u2019t be able to fund the public services that we need just by a wealth tax that affects the top 0.1% of the population.\u201d<\/p>\n
He adds: \u201cThe idea that squeezing a tiny elite of billionaires will pay for everything that we want and everything that we need is fantasy and we do need to expose that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The argument is not the kind of pragmatism that the Fabians\u2019 fiercest critics might expect. Part brains trust, part members\u2019 association, the UK\u2019s oldest thinktank has come under extraordinary scrutiny of late, with Farage calling it \u201cfar left\u201d and the TalkTV presenter Alex Phillips accusing it of being a secret cabal promoting the end of capitalism and the nation state.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1884 and initially most closely associated with the pioneering social reformers Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the Fabian Society was a co-founder of the Labour party and has been affiliated with it ever since.<\/p>\n
The colourful grid of pamphlets displayed across one wall of the Fabians\u2019 office covers issues including pensioner poverty, energy reform and Labour\u2019s path to power in 2019 (ahem), but conspicuously lacks calls to overthrow capitalism.<\/p>\n
<\/span>The Greens\u2019 Zack Polanski backs a wealth tax, an annual levy on the assets of the super-rich.<\/span> Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Dromey, 40, is from a Labour dynasty, the son of the former deputy leader Harriet Harman and the late Jack Dromey MP. He was a councillor for the party in Lewisham, south London. \u201cI\u2019d be lying if I said that they did not shape my passion for and interest in politics and my commitment to a more equal society,\u201d he says of his parents. But he insists he wants to be judged on his own merits.<\/p>\n Less than 18 months into a Labour term that began with a landslide majority after 14 years in opposition, Dromey shares the exasperation of many in the party at the government\u2019s deep unpopularity. \u201cIt has been a challenging first year and a half,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He praises some of the policies pursued by Keir Starmer, who was a member of the Fabians\u2019 executive committee \u2013 and penned a pamphlet of his own \u2013 before becoming prime minister. In particular, Dromey highlights the Renters\u2019 Rights Act and the Employment Rights Act, which became law on 18 December.<\/p>\n \u201cThese things are quietly radical. They\u2019re things that significantly change the balance of power in our housing market and in our labour market,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n But it is clear that, like many in the party, Dromey would welcome a more robust assertion of its values, including on Reform\u2019s favoured battleground of migration.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to demonstrate competence, and that\u2019s most obviously around small boats,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the government also needs to demonstrate and expose that Reform do not speak for the British public on immigration. I think on that latter one, we\u2019ve not done that enough. We should go harder on that.\u201d<\/p>\n After the chaotic run-up to Rachel Reeves\u2019s November budget, Dromey also traces part of Labour\u2019s predicament back to its decision in opposition to support Jeremy Hunt\u2019s cuts to national insurance contributions (NICs) \u2013 and to fight last year\u2019s general election promising no increases in income tax, NICs or VAT.<\/p>\n \u201cThe previous government was making fiscal promises that they had absolutely no intention of delivering. It was a bear trap. It was a landmine,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it would have been better just to not commit to matching that NI cut. I don\u2019t think it would have had a material impact on the election result. People were done with the Tories.\u201d<\/p>\n Sticking with that pledge pushed Reeves towards using employer NICs as a revenue raiser instead at last year\u2019s budget, he says, \u201cwhich undoubtedly has had an impact on unemployment, on business confidence, on relations with businesses\u201d.<\/p>\n Having made the clear promise, however, Dromey believes breaching it by raising income tax, as the chancellor flirted with doing in her second budget, would have been disastrous. \u201cTo make that the central commitment and then to break it would, I think, have led to an irreversible loss of trust among the electorate.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018The previous government was making fiscal promises that they had absolutely no intention of delivering.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n He is most vehement on the subject of social care, where Fabian research has highlighted the benefits of increasing workers\u2019 pay.<\/p>\n Labour recently announced details of its planned fair pay agreement, set to be negotiated between employers and unions and come into force in 2028. Dromey welcomes the policy but calls on the government to confront the wider challenge of funding the overstretched sector, now under review by the government fixer Louise Casey.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a large proportion of the workforce who are doing some of the most important work in our economy and our society, helping people live decent and independent lives, who have been routinely undervalued,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Labour has set aside \u00a3500m to fund the agreement in its first year, but Fabian research suggests equalising social care workers with the lowest NHS pay band and improving pay progression would cost four times that. \u201cWe need to fix social care and address the workforce crisis, because the treatment of care workers is a disgrace,\u201d Dromey says.<\/p>\n With speculation about Starmer\u2019s future at fever pitch, Dromey sticks to the Fabians\u2019 time-honoured neutrality \u2013 though when his team exchanged jokey secret Santa gifts, one colleague got an Andy Burnham mug, another a lifesize cutout of the prime minister. As the Fabians plan their annual conference in January, at which Starmer\u2019s leadership will inevitably be the subject of frenzied gossip, this unsettling artefact currently occupies a corner of the office, like a cardboard elephant in the room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, is offering voters \u201cunicorns\u201d and Labour must confront his \u201cfantasy\u201d solutions such as the idea that a wealth tax would fix the public finances, according to the Fabian Society\u2019s general secretary, Joe Dromey. Much of the government\u2019s fire is trained on Nigel Farage. But in an end-of-year interview, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[21499,1189,11833,11440,124,4669,7040,2980,15434],"class_list":{"0":"post-39729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-fabian","9":"tag-fantasy","10":"tag-offering","11":"tag-polanski","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-society","14":"tag-solutions","15":"tag-voters","16":"tag-zack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}