Thread by @RussInCheshire

Long (long!) attempt at joined-up thinking about how the country could resolve many of its issues, revitalise democracy, return power and agency to regions, improve our economy, and transform into a green, higher-skilled nation.

(I've said some of this before - apologies)

We have a crisis.

No, let me correct that. We have about 40 crises, almost all of them emerging from the same fundamental political idiocy: lack of investment, and an dumb faith that low tax and a feral market will solve everything.

40 years of it. Look at the result.

George Osborne promised his corporate tax cuts and shrinking the state would revitalise the nation, create growth and raise wages.

He did it every year from 2010-2016.

And every year from 2010-2016 he cut his growth forecasts, wages and £ fell, and we slid into despond.

Short-termism kills us.

Cancelling NHS training in 2011 saved a few pennies in 2011, but is WILDLY expensive and harmful now.

Same with cancelling "green crap". And rail investment. Schools. Apprenticeships. Roads. Borders. Water. Energy. Transport. Childcare. Social care.

All of them are now in massive crisis, because we tried to save a few pennies a decade ago, or handed decisions to the greedy.

And the idiot govt's solution is: do more of the same. Hand more to corporate/rich Britain, less to workers, cut spending, and just BELIEVE harder.

It's bollocks.

No business with half a brain cares about 5% tax on profits. They care about customers feeling confident to spend, having skilled staff, access to a massive market, infrastructure, trading laws that won't be ripped up for being too French, and currency stability.

So borrowing to cut taxes is the absolutely most stupid thing imaginable when all those other factors - far more important factors - are not just ignored, but made worse almost as a matter of pride.

There is a way out of this, but it requires joined-up thinking and courage.

None of this will be easy or cheap.

But we've just borrowed £300bn to make things worse, so I don't see how "The Markets" can complain if we borrow £300bn to make things better. At least it will show we have a plan, rather than a demented libertarian fantasy.

That's the background. Now the ideas.

The Robin Hood Tax (Financial Transactions Tax, FTT) is a proposed tax on stock market transactions.

A tax of just 0.05% would raise £4.7bn. 1% would raise £94bn.

And it only hits people trading stocks.

By definition, people trade stocks with spare money they think they can afford to gamble.

Yes, those people include pension funds, but we're talking about a 1% tax when funds are traded (not on the funds themselves) in return for more growth and lower borrowing/tax elsewhere.

And bear in mind the unfunded tax cuts just announced knocked 3% off the ENTIRE ECONOMY in 48 hours. A 1% tax on part of the stock market economy (not even all of it) to fund £94bn per year of investment in growth - it seems small change by comparison.

FTT also eliminates automated "bot trading" that leads to financially volatile markets - incredibly short term trades, lasting micro-seconds, working in tiny margins.

These account for +80% of trades, and the practice has caused (or exacerbated) multiple crashes since the 90s.

If you tax at trading at even 0.05%, those tiny margins bots look for become unviable - but the company being traded feels no effect. It simply reduces the worst aspects of short-termism and the exploitation of volatility.

If you're trading long term, you're unaffected.

An international 0.05% FTT would raise £250bn.

A 1% global FTT raises £5 trillion a year.

Imagine the good that could be done with £5 trillion.

And - to repeat - more stability, long term investments unaffected, and it only taxes the wealthiest people gambling spare cash.

You could implement it nationally tomorrow. And that provides much funding for the next idea.

We need a strategy to create domestic renewable energy. Tidal. Wind. Solar. Battery. And a grid to support it.

This is existential. Nothing else matters if we don't solve climate.

The Market won't do this alone. If it could, it would have by now. It's had 40+ years, but all that's happened is "efficiency" drives (meaning pay cuts for you, dividends for shareholders, and minimal long-term investment).

That's not what the country/planet needs.

Short term: a programme of re-wilding and tree planting. Every verge, every border, every field.

This will create thousands of jobs, and also begin to (slightly) mitigate climate change while we transform. Start this today. It would help pull us through the recession.

While that's happening, pay people a PROPER WAGE to carry out a centrally-directed programme of mass insulation of homes. And mass replacement of gas boilers with electric. And funded training.

Tens of thousands of jobs and apprenticeships, right now, funded by FTT.

Both these things would boost the real economy, because the people doing this work would spend their wages (rather than millionaires hiding tax savings in offshore accounts).

Home insulation would also have an immediate effect on energy bills for millions.

Longer term (but starting now): pour money into STEM education so we have skills by 2030.

Trade raw materials to build steelworks and industrial talent that lets us create tidal and wind power. Push this at a national, governmental level. Make this a focus.

Invest public money in semiconductor tech that allows us to build solar farms domestically.

Place solar in more imaginative places than farmer's fields. We are not short of places to put things, but we are short (and will be shorter) of land for building and crops.

So: pace solar/wind in motorway central reservations. Carpet factory and shopping centre roofs with solar.

Place solar as if they're bridges or rafts over canals and reservoirs, where they won't eat into valuable land, and will also reduce evaporation from global heating.

This approach keeps more land free for the next crisis to be tackled: housing.

It is INSANE how much of our income we spend on bricks and mortar. It's multiple-times what it was in 1950 (adjusted for inflation). And that stops us spending on other things.

You can't invest in a start-up or take time off to train in a new skill if you're trapped by a giant mortgage (literal translation: death-pledge). And that's your life gone, spent on a box of bricks.

What's the answer? Market economics (you'll be amazed to hear me say)

Build massively. Swamp the market. Force down prices. Sorry if this spoils the un-earned riches of people who bought in 1977, but it helps everybody else - it means we can invest more in humans, education, health, and REAL growth, not inflated house prices.

Once again, doing this would create loads of jobs: builders and trades, training then, employing them, tools, materials, and all the associated industries - insulation, furniture etc.

But we need land to build on, and that's the next bit of joined-up thinking.

Tax land-banking out of existence. That's the practice of housebuilders buying land then not building on it, which causes higher demand, pushes up prices, and inflates their profits when they eventually build.

This is major driver of housing shortages. Tax it to death.

Levy a 10% per annum wealth tax on land which has planning permission or owned by Housebuilders, but isn't being built upon. builders will shit, but let them. They don't own the country. We are their customers.

So who does own the country? Well, that's the next bit.

Much of the country is owned by a very few wealthy people - the Cadogan family (93 acres of Chelsea), the Grosvenors (133,100 acres), and the Pearsons (70,000 acres).

So: implement land-values and wealth taxes on these giants (less so on people who just own a small field).

Combine that with rent control and house-value control, to prevent the costs being passed on to you and me. They can't move land off-shore, they can't hide it. It's easily measured and valued. And if they don't like tax, they can sell the land to somebody who does.

Combined, this provides the land, the permissions, and the tax revenues to allow us to start building.

But we need people who can build immediately - we can't wait half a generation for today's kids to join the workforce. We need people now. And that means immigration

Our obsession with immigration is absolutely mad. People have always moved around. We always will. As climate change hits more - and it will - economic and climate migration pressures will soar. We need political courage to tell people this, and prepare them.

And I don't just mean "you'll hate this but it's happening" preparations. I mean "wow, this is a GOOD thing" preparations.

Have the courage to challenge the shitty story about immigrants - to show they're not just a good thing, but an essential one if we want to recover.

Essential if we want health and social services too.

Invest immediately in health/social care, and not just physical stuff like hospitals: training too.

Pay health workers more, cos we're losing them to stress and poor pay at an ALARMING rate.

Next: infrastructure.

Our infrastructure is unbelievably bad. You only find this out if you go to Europe and compare. Everywhere has traffic jams and train issues, but not like us. Nobody else is pouring sewage into the sea. Nobody else hasn't built an reservoir for 40 years.

Our water companies currently fix or replace 0.05% of our pipes per annum. This means they expect our sewers to last 2000 years.

WHAT?

Legislate: they must increase repairs to something like 1% a year, or they're not allowed to make dividend payments.

The reasons behind their failure are the same as those behind every collapsing vital infrastructure - "efficiency savings". This lets owners declare a profit, but only by investing the bare minimum, cutting wages, and shovelling dividends to shareholders.

And it gets largely ignored by our political class because our political class largely doesn't live where it hurts. London gets 26x as much infrastructure spending PER PERSON as the North East of England.

How do we fix that? Next bit of joined-up thinking.

Sell the Palace of Westminster. Flog it. Now, basically.

It's falling apart, is gonna cost tens of billions to repair it, and all that's gonna do is entrench the useless political system that's grown like a fungus on it. It should be sold, and use the proceeds to start again.

It's an iconic building in the best location in the most expensive real-estate in the world. Somebody is gonna buy it and turn it into a few £50m flats, a pricey hotel, a museum - think of the cash it would generate if US tourists could stand at the dispatch box!

With the billions the sale would raise (plus billions for selling govt offices around Westminster) we could build a new parliament in a site in the centre of the country, maybe on the HS2 route. That's where parliament sits now - but not where govt departments are.

There's no reason why, with modern telecoms, the whole of govt needs to be in the same 2sq miles. Break it up, and move every dept to a different region.

Aside: I happen to be a federalist - I like the idea of 4 independent countries acting as a federation rather than a union.

If we do that, maybe some govt depts go to Scotland, Wales and NI.

But even if they're all in England, why all in one place? Bring democracy closer to people and spread wealth and opportunity. Level up!

Transport in Tonypandy. Pensions in Portsmouth. Defence in Doncaster.

Senior political staff will still want things only London gets (cos that's where decision-makers live at the moment).

But now they'll have to live with OUR schools, transport, infrastructure, cultural landscape and career opportunities. So they'll actually do something about it

Meanwhile, abolish the Lords and replace it with an elected upper chamber which has a 15 year term of office.

Stagger its elections, one-third elected every 5 years, so there's stability and consistency. And give them policy responsibility for long-term projects.

These should be (at least)

- Climate and environment
- Energy
- Education

These things need to be de-politicised and given long-term planning. They take decades and affect generations. But govt often thinks in terms of the next election, at best. At worst, the next headline.

Finally: a complete review of our tax code, which has now grown to be the longest in the world at 11,520 pages. This is cos it's stuffed with get-out clauses and dodges of every conceivable type. We don't need them. Other countries survive just fine without. End it.

We don't need a flat-tax, but we do need simplification that abolishes all the ways smart accountants help the rich avoid tax. This, combined with the other tax reforms I mention, could fund all or most of the ideas I've explained.

Costly?
Yep!

More costly than doing nothing while the nation goes down the pan, social unrest risks a lurch into extremism, and the planet boils around us?
Nope!

Sorry to have bored you, but one last thing to say:

I don't have all the answers, and I'm absolutely sure every answer I've suggested can be improved upon.

Twitter is the home of criticism. It's easy. We all do it.

This time, if you have a better idea, write it down. And vote for it.

Oh, one other thing, which I didn't mention cos I assumed it goes without saying: join the Single Market and Customs Union.

Re-join the EU as well, if we can. But SM and CU are absolute essentials.