Advice taken!

I have castigated the former Chancellor, the Queen's ghillie, for his unwonted and ill-deserved reputation for competency within this high office.

The time has now come to give credit to his successor for paying heed to the advice that I proffered a mere three weeks ago.

Let us remember that Mr Brown declined to follow good advice and indeed revealed for all to see the hollowness of his Chancellorship, its dependence on conjuring and trickery, by his response to the clamour following the belated discovery by Parliament of his sleight of hand. For Mr Brown had proposed to scramble out of his predicament by offering more charity, some to the elderly, some to the poor and always nothing to some; for his scheme was unworkable and would have merely served to increase the complexity, nay the incomprehensibility of the taxation system.

My advice to Mr Darling was that he could resolve his problem while continuing in the government's stated, if ill-served, objective of simplification. He could reintroduce the 10 percent rate of tax, raise personal allowances or reduce the 20p rate a little more. And I stated: it is my belief, that a progressive Chancellor could, if events warranted it, recover his shortfall by reducing the threshold at which 40p becomes payable.

That is exactly what Mr Darling has done this day. He has raised personal allowances and reduced the threshold at which 40p in the pound becomes payable. These are measures which are progressive but not of necessity socialist.

It has taken too long for Mr Brown's government to come to this point. Mr Darling is nevertheless to be congratulated for taking my advice and, at last, demonstrating some competence within his office.

Not amongst the greatest

Peturbed as I am by the mismanagement of the exchequer by the Queen's ghillie I have spent some little time in examination of his history in office. I do so not out of any jealousy as to the title of longest-serving Chancellor, even though it appears that alongside his jiggery-pokery and knavery in office there are indeed spurious claims that the man held this office for longer than myself. I note for instance that the electronic encyclopaedia, Wikipaedia, states he was the longest serving Chancellor since the Baron Bexley. Now Mr Brown served for some ten years whilst, in total, I accomplished some 12 years and four months in this office. Indeed the noble Lord Bexley served for only ten years and seven months.

I grant that both these gentlemen made continuous service in office; my experience ranged over a period of some thirty years I fear. Indeed on two occasions I appointed myself to the office and it is to be fervently hoped that Mr Brown does not seek to follow my example.

I return to the matter of Mr Brown's record as Chancellor. In spite of the ill-earned sobriquet, Murderer of Gordon, once attached to me, I do not pretend to be making an "assassination", a successful demolition of a political record as I cannot claim at present to have the wherewithal for such devastation. Nevertheless it is alarming to see the extent to which this man has veered over the years from good practices of management of the Treasury.

For more than anyone I have yearned over the years to reduce the income tax and to ensure that the State does not penalise working people for their travails. Yet I would never do so by means of creating a multitude of new taxes for it is of the utmost importance that the working man knows what he pays to the State and what he is due for his payments.

Let us consider the reduction of the income tax, reduced by one penny in 2000 and by a further tuppence this year. It would be a small but notable achievement for a Chancellor; except two-thirds of the reduction has been rejected by the populace as a confidence trick.

What of the first penny? It was indeed reduced in 2000 and the reduction remained affordable for all of two years. It seems that within that two years, the Chancellor discovered he had need of that one penny but dared not reimpose it. So what sleight of hand does he use, what jiggery pokery, what knavery?

The listener must forgive me for piling word upon word. I do so only to emphasise the requirement for the Chancellor to be honest with the population and to set against it the alarming proposition that in the modern age Chancellors have come to be praised for their dishonesty, for their ability to juggle and deceive the eye.

For that is what transpired in 2002. The one penny tax was reimposed, indeed reimposed twice, but not under the name of "income tax" but using the new device of "National Insurance", which I hear was created as a worthy concept by my Liberal successors in order to pay pensions and medical treatment costs. The detail of this imposition is by and large irrelevant to my case, although it may be worth some exposition; in mitigation it should be stated that the one pence was levied on the full range of income - whilst the bulk of national insurance is levied only to a certain point and has therefore become a regressive tax; in further condemnation it must be stated it was removed twice from the pay-packets of those in employment, once as a direct payment from the worker, the second occasion as an increase in the levy paid by the employer.

Secondly, on the charge sheet, I must draw attention to events between 1999 and 2001. On the face of it Mr Brown sought to establish a new standard for Chancellors by making announcements a year or even two years before they are put into effect. In honest hands it would be praiseworthy. But as has been learnt over the last year, the effect may be to protect blameworthy proposals from parliamentary and public scrutiny.

In 1999 the Chancellor announced he would remove the tax allowance hitherto given to married couples and that removal would take effect the following year. It was to be replaced by a child tax credit to support couples, married or unmarried, with children; but the "tax credit" was not to be introduced until 2001.

I will not dwell on the iniquitous nature of the so-called tax credit system introduced by this Chancellor. I have observed before that it has merely created an army of clerks and to deny many thousands those earnings to which they are entitled. Indeed I fear it creates a nation of beggars, of supplicants who must seek the return of their earnings by the filling of multiple forms. It is perhaps a theme to which I will return.

Nor will I dwell on the removal of support for married couples. Let me state merely that it was to be expected from a socialist Chancellor, an heir of William Blake. It would have appalled our dear Queen but I fear from the present Monarch there is, with inevitability, only silence.

Nay, my concern in this exposition is the 12 months between 2000 and 2001. During this period additional taxes were paid by married couples and no subsidies were paid to families, whether married or not, to assist with the costs of raising children. It was another sleight of hand.

The Queen's ghillie may rank with those of us who held this office for many years; he may be amongst the longest-serving but he will not be among the greatest. Indeed these tricks and deceits have served to demean this high office in a way worthy only of the great trickster Beaconsfield himself.

No election yet

I fear that the Queen's ghillie will continue to delay the calling of an election following the results of ballots for the municipal authorities yesterday.

It is a severe humiliation for a progressive Minister that he should be rejected by the populace for not being progressive enough. Yet that is what has transpired - and it is a rejection of the socialist experiment rather than of progressive policies.

For in spite of my youthful loyalties, it peturbs me when the populace turns to the Conservative party; for in spite of its protestations this party will never deliver progress to the people. Indeed on the issue of the moment there is no evidence that the beating heart of Conservatism is anything but overjoyed that the poor have to pay more taxes.

Nevertheless it is a tribute to the democratic process when fiscal issues lie at the heart of the choices made by so many voters, by the people of England and Wales. For progress is delivered by the State behaving justly, not by the State overreaching its authority. Socialism creates an arrogance, a belief that the State can solve all problems and that the people must submit to its decisions, for good or ill. The present government may describe itself as "new" or even as "new old" - it is unclear exactly which - but it remains socialist at core and therefore prone to error.

As for the young Mr Clegg, he has survived his first test as leader and delivered modest advances for his party. There has been no calamity; although it is a matter of regret that the population did not give more credit to Mr Clegg and Mr Cable for delivering resistance to mistaken and regressive tax policies at the outset.

I am not acquainted with the present Monarch; but I am sure our dear Queen would have offered encouraging words to any youthful leader who bore such a great test with credit.

A faltering government

A Chancellor fails to defend his budget;
A Prime Minister fails to defend his Chancellor;
A Prime Minister fails to defend a budget that he himself proposed while Chancellor;
A Prime Minister and a Chancellor succumb weakly to threats and alarums issued by their back-bench ranks.
What is the appropriate and honourable course following the unwonted, unnecessary creation of a what is a major constitutional crisis, a shameful undermining of the foundations of executive government?

A Chancellor and a Prime Minister working in consort seek to unravel the budgets they themselves proposed.
They do so without art, without guile, without policy, without principle.
They do not take advice; they appear to consult no one with experience.
A Prime Minister admits he proposes to take too much in tax from the poor and promises to return these sums later in the year; but not all will be compensated and it appears none will be compensated by the Inland Revenue.
This is a hotch-potch of a policy, a stew brewed in haste, concocted with ingredients plucked from a garden decaying and browning in the autumn of its life.

This has become a shambles of a government. I am amazed that HerMajesty should tolerate such weakness and lack of competence amongst her ministers. It should go.

A little advice for Mr Darling

What a pickle the Chancellor finds himself in when he has to promise his errant supporters unspecified fiscal changes. It seems that Mr Darling promises to put right the mistakes made by the Queen's ghillie in last year's budget; but this rectification will not take place yet.

It is an absurd promise for a Chancellor to make; even more absurd that any member of parliament with a jot or tittle of self-respect should give it credence. Yet these MPs are sheep; ewes that have broken through a hole in a hedge; animals that will gladly return to captivity with a little yelp from a dog.

How is the Chancellor to honour his promise? I have a little experience in these matters and for the sake of working people, rather than for the sake of a government without anchor, without rudder and with bearing, I will assist.

It is time he adhered to good principles of making a budget; that changes should be simple and easy to understand. It is to be feared that Mr Brown and Mr Darling will be loath to hold to these principles. For theirs is a history of meddling, of creating complexity and confusion. Mr Darling will believe he can identify those who have suffered and pass money to them; he will create new classes of recipients; he will recruit many thousands more clerks to process lengthy applications from those who would belong to these new classes.

His imperative, rather, should be to continue his declared mission to simplify the tax system whilst also adhering to a second major principle: that the poor should not be made poorer.

His choices are therefore straightforward: to reduce the 20p rate further; to reintroduce a tenpence rate or similar; to increase the personal allowances allowed to taxpayers.

Now these are hard times and the Chancellor may believe he cannot make such concessions, which would improve circumstances for all tax-payers. Yet in truth, in removing the tenpence rate, he has not delivered a single income tax; for there remains, I believe, a rate of 40p in the pound for those earning above a certain portion. Distant as I am now from Treasury affairs I do not have the figures but, it is my belief, that a progressive Chancellor could, if events warranted it, recover his shortfall by reducing the threshold at which 40p becomes payable. It may even be that within 12 months he could recover his position by simply failing to raise threshold.

Now that would indeed be a sleight of hand worthy of a Chancellor within a progressive government.

Mr Brown must defend his Budget

It is right that a Chancellor should defend his budget; and if he were to become Prime Minister, he should remain proud of his actions when he ruled the Treasury.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the Queen's ghillie should return from visiting our American cousins, having, regrettably, played second fiddle to the Pope, intent on mounting such a defence. Yet he returns to rumblings of discontent, fuelled by the poverty of his judgement. For a Chancellor's honourable defence of his budget will not detract from the shortcomings of his policies; and in this case there are many shortcomings indeed.

I remarked a little while ago how long it took the labouring MPs to ascertain the sleight of hand exercised by their leader. Had it passed them by in total, had it been left to Mr Clegg and Mr Cable to expose the fraud, it might in time have led to Mr Brown's last budget being hailed as great in its reforms, in its long-awaited simplification of the tax system.

Indeed there was a time when we held high hopes for the representatives of the labouring people, believing a good education would make them great legislators, courageous tribunes of the people. This may have happened at some time; but I would never have conceived that their party would levy taxes which would take hard-earned pounds from those working people who earn the least and distribute those self-same pounds to those who earn rather more comfortable sums. Nor would it have been conceivable that these tribunes of the people would flock around their leaders like sheep, their slow-working brains taking some 13 months to perceive the inequity that had been heaped upon those they represent.

The late Queen was somewhat opposed to labouring people choosing their own representatives. I sought in statesmanlike terms to persuade her that our nation must change and adopt democracy - with little success, I fear. She would take some satisfaction now in seeing how badly served the people are.

There is a solution for Mr Brown, an honourable course to take. For it is oft forgotten that in my time ministers of the Queen became directly accountable to their electors. When we took office, we had to seek a fresh endorsement from those who elected us.

That is not the custom now; but it is a cause of discontent with the public that the Queen's ghillie should have assumed the highest office without asking their opinion on the matter. Now the first Budget of Mr Brown's premiership - and also the last of his Chancellorship - is questioned by his party. It must be a matter of high principle; let him therefore seize the moment and present his policies to the public for their approval.

A Clanging Bell

I have been perusing the words of the former Prime Minister, Mr Blair, as they were delivered in a recent address at the Roman Catholic cathedral in Westminster.

His words are hard to disagree with and, yet, I feel this is a person with whom I would not wish to be in agreement.

I find myself in whole-hearted concordance with a statement such as this: I then go further and argue that religious faith is a good thing in itself, that so far from being a reactionary force, it has a major part to play in shaping the values which guide the modern world, and can and should be a force for progress.

Mr Blair proceeds to a discussion of why he was coy about his "faith" when he held the highest office. He states: In fact at no time since the Enlightenment has religion ever gone away. It has always been at the very core of life for millions of people, the foundation of their existence, the motive for their behaviour, the thing which gives sense to their lives and purpose to their journeys – which makes life more than just a sparrow’s flight through a lighted hall from one darkness to another, in that memorable image of the Venerable Bede.

He refers to "the rich tradition of religion as a force for good in history."

I cannot but agree, Mr Blair. He refers to the commitment of loving service of many believers and he mentions the perils of extremism. I cannot but agree...and yet I am ready to disagree.

Mr Blair proceeds to discuss what is now called "globalisation", which, I understand, is a reference to free trade. He makes a thesis that religions can help the word tolerate free trade and even adapt to it because they, too, are global movements.

He proceeds then to call for a "sensible long-term partnership" with the nations of China and India. The world has advanced since Palmerston and Disraeli sought to bully these nations with gun-boats and cannon and it is a matter to be welcomed and yet....China is as much a tyranny as it was in 1850 and it is now a nation without any official religion, where religions may be suppressed at whim. Indeed the world is aflame now over the travails of Tibet at the hands of its Chinese conquerors. Should we succumb again to the lure of the Chinese market when the price is our dignity and the freedom of millions, nay, billions?

Mr Blair, it seems, proposes to establish a foundation which will entice faiths of all kinds to pursue what are known as Millennium Development Goals. These sound worthy matters to me, matters that should be held to the heart of those concern about global justice and poverty. Indeed they encompass primary education and the health of mothers and children.

But is not the former Prime Minister, in prescribing that these goals are a worthy joint objective of faiths that may worship different gods, or different names of the same God, is he not seeking to set boundaries on the work of God himself?

Indeed it is noticeable that Mr Blair has not detected that democracy itself is missing from the Millennium Development Goals, the very same democracy and liberty for which Mr Blair assured his population he was fighting wars in foreign countries and, yet, which he is willing to trade with the Chinese.

It is also remarkable that when in his references to the proud traditions of "faith" - at no point does he use the word "Christianity" - he omits to mention the strand of this faith, excluding the wickedness of the Crusaders, that has deplored and resisted war and violence. Indeed he fails to mention St Augustine who formulated rules of Just War, rules which would have precluded many of Mr Blair's bloody adventures had he consented to consult any Bishop or Archbishop in his deliberations.

Our Lord stated there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous. And indeed St Paul turned from being a great persecutor of the church to being its greatest advocate. But there is no whisper, no hint of repentance in Mr Blair's words, however much he may choose to cast himself as a modern-day St Paul. There are many worthy and agreeable words here but they are as clanging bells without a broken heart, a broken and contrite spirit, as the Psalmist describes it.