There are a few personal financial policies which were bandied about in the final leaders debate which I would like to look at.  I’ve done some research on the policies, and looked at the great Channel 4 fact-checker micro-website, to try and draw some conclusions on the Tory economic policy.

Inheritance tax is a very contentious issue, and one which Gordon Brown alluded to repeatedly in the debate last Thursday.

So I would like to look at exactly who it will benefit, and how.  Annually, the 3,000 richest estates in the country (ie those over £1 million) would benefit by an average of £233,000.  That’s £700 million annually taken out of the current tax system and back into the pocket of the richest people in the country. Or, as someone tweeted on Thursday, in response to Cameron’s answer on this topic (”We want to reward those who have worked hard all their lives”) – “we want to reward those who have inherited hard all their lives”.

People have contended that £1 million is not a huge amount when we look at property prices.  Don’t forget however that the threshold is £1 million per person so if we’re looking at couples, that’s a £2 million house we’re considering. In 2008, only 82 houses over £2 million were sold in the whole country – hardly a large proportion of the population, then. We should note too that the current inheritance tax system only affects 15000 estates – roughly the richest 3% of those who died. The Tories will reduce this tax at the “poorest” end of this, but more so at the richest end. Therefore it is undeniably elitist.

And yet at the other end, Cameron will cut tax-credits – money given to the poorest families (those who work though – so the very hard working people Cameron talks about).

Despite his protestations, it is not true that only families earning over £50,000 will have their credits cut. In fact, the Institute of Fiscal studies has shown that all families earning more than the relatively low £40,000 will lose out, and other independent financial analysts say it could be as low as £31,000.

The Tory plans are to take £400 million per year out of tax credits.  Wonder where they’re going to find the other £300 million to benefit their super-rich mates?

Reason #19: the Tories will use their budget to help the superrich and penalise the working poor.

As if we need more reasons why gay people should feel alienated from the neo-nasty party, along comes news that Phillipa Stroud, the woman who has headed up the Tory think-tank, The Centre for Social Justice, is a “Christian” who set up a church which tried to convince its gay members that their sexual preference indicated they were controlled by demons and could be cured of this.

The Centre for Social Justice was set up under Iain Duncan Smith, has had a strong influence on many of DC’s family policies, and claims to have formulated as many as 70 of the current Tory policies being promised to the electorate at the moment.

I’ll leave the final comment on this to Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall.”If Mrs Stroud has been praying to rid Britain of its homosexuality, she clearly hasn’t been praying hard enough. It would be highly regrettable if someone who continued to hold these views held any significant office in government.”

Reason #18 – their social policy is being heavily influenced by a woman who believes that being gay is caused by demonic possession.

A man is known by the company he keeps. Part 3.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Ashcroft case is so well documented that it will serve little purpose to go over the whole sorry episode again.

But what I do want to reiterate is that however much he wants to distance himself from it and no matter how long he refuses to be drawn on the specifics of what he knew, Cameron has not explained in a satisfactory manner whether Ashcroft’s tax status was known to him. We know that Hague had extensive and almost certainly compromising dealings with Ashcroft, but Cameron has sought to distance himself from the matter.

I find this very hard to accept, especially given that 5% of all Tory party donations since the last election have been from Ashcroft. That’s 1 in 20 of those Gordon Brown billboards, paid for by a company which wasn’t paying tax here and therefore was not allowed to donate this money.

Duncan Bannatyne is well known for his support for Brown, and for his recent scathing attacks in the press on fellow Dragon’s Den investor James Caan, who is, like Ashcroft, a non-dom.  He spoke to The Daily Mail recently, saying

‘Four years ago I asked Ashcroft if he was a non-dom, and he said yes. So if Cameron didn’t know, he is an idiot. We must change the law so non-doms can’t be in parliament in any form or receive any honour. Only British tax payers should get honours of any kind.’

Reason #17: The Ashcroft scandal exposed him as either stupid or dishonest – and neither of these is an attribute I would look for in my Prime Minister.

This is one for the Tories.

When the expenses crisis broke (and let’s gloss over the completely biased handling of it by The Telegraph – which published day after day after day of Labour expenses so that it was firmly established in the public’s and the media’s minds as a Labour problem, before going on to finally release details of the far more risible Tory claims), Cameron, no doubt fore-warned by his pals at The Torygraph, acted swiftly and decisively.

In fact, he acted entirely properly. His party came out as one which won’t tolerate those in a position of privilege abusing it for personal gain, even if they are doing so within the letter of the law. A slew of resignations followed, and all was well within the Tory Party.

But what is strange is how some of his inner-sanctum were protected from the  hammer blows dealt out to the rest of the party. We’ve already mentioned how Osbourne escaped. Alan Duncan, despite his comments (again, see previous post), was not sacked – perhaps because it would harm Cameron’s bid to open up the party to gays, to sack the first openly gay Tory MP?

It’s instructive to look at DC’s response to the whole Ashcroft palaver this year. I will be writing more on Ashcroft later, and  I’m sure you’ve all read the ins-and-outs, the who-said-what’s of the matter.  But it remains that Cameron has not acted on Ashcroft, paid back the money, or promised anything more than the same vague assurances over Ashcroft changing his status than Hague had given years ago, when he knew this was not the case.

Reason #16: So my concern, if I were a Tory, would be about a leader who is happy to hang members out to dry to look good to the electorate, while hypocritically defending the apparently indefensible acts of those who he wishes to protect.

On the day that the front pages are rightly dominated by Gordon’s bigot gaffe, I can only come back with a sense of balance on this. Gordon was wrong to respond as he did, although in his defence, Mrs Duffy had asked questions and then repeatedly talked over him while he was trying to answer, and she also said “you can’t say anything about the immigrants, because you’re saying that you’re ra… all these Eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?”, which would put my personal bigot radar up. He also didn’t realise he was still being recorded, and if I were called to account, every time I blew off steam inappropriately after a difficult phone call or encounter, I would probably be equally embarassed.

But what I want to remind readers of today is Alan Duncan – the Tory’s own inappropriate comment generator.

After the expenses scandal, Mr Duncan (who had wrongly claimed thousands for gardening, and also claimed mortgage interest on a second home even though he owned several homes in London already), being filmed without realising it, said that MPs (who earn roughly £64,000 per year, a salary in the top 4% of the population) were being forced to “to live on rations and are treated like shit.”

So again, I repeat what I used to excuse Brown. He didn’t realise he was being recorded, he was just sounding off, it is entirely excusable.  Not the same his comments on Have I Got News For You, when surely he couldn’t claim he didn’t know he was being recorded?  On the show, he boasted about his mortgage claims, and said that he wouldn’t pay the money back, and that it was a “great system”.

When asked on another recording of the show his opinion of Miss California USA 2009, who publicly opposes gay marriage, he said “If you read that Miss California has been murdered, you will know it was me, won’t you?”

Again, I can see the intended humour, and don’t really blame Duncan for his comments.  I just thought they might help give some balance to the news today.

Reason #15: Alan Duncan betrayed an entitetlement in his recorded comments for which he was not removed from his position as an MP.