McLuskey on Today

Len McLuskey, leader of the UK’s biggest union Unite, was on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning getting in all sorts of muddles. The most embarrassing seemed to be when he seemed to tie himself in knots getting confused between the national debt with the national deficit. But hey, it’s easy to muddle your words sometimes so we’ll generously forgive him that.
Two points emerged from the interview that are worth dealing with, though.

Firstly on the deficit he said:

"I accept that we have a deficit and when any nation has a deficit it has to deal with it and there are three simple ways of dealing with it, one is through a cuts agenda, the other two methods are tax reform and economic growth. What we're saying is that it's the tax reform issue and economic growth that we're urging the Government to look at."

It would have been worthwhile here to ask Mr McLuskey exactly what he meant by “tax reform”. I may be making a large assumption here, but I assume he means raising taxes, specifically on the wealthy, to help reduce the deficit. If this is indeed what he meant, then it’s not exactly clear how this is commensurate with a pro-growth strategy he simultaneously endorses.

It is also worth mentioning that the government has made several reforms to the taxation system, including raising the threshold at which individuals start paying tax, cut corporation tax and raised VAT. These may not be the tax changes Mr McLuskey wanted, but they have happened all the same.

The second point is almost the laughable idea that Britain’s debt is not concerning because it has historical precedent from 1945. It probably shouldn’t be too hard to realise that Britain’s debt in 1945 was brought about by a catastrophic total war against fascism in Europe, and that the years following were marked by severe austerity.

You can listen to the interview in full here