If the two Eds get their way, an Englishman’s home will not be a castle, but a leaky ruin
Whoa there, I hope you haven’t just spent a happy weekend of pottering about
and improving your home, in the way of British families for hundreds of years.
Forget about the conservatory, folks. Stuff the new kitchen. You want my advice,
you will let it all slide.
If you see one of those damp patches appear on the ceiling – about the size
and colour of a poppadom – you should just lie back and watch it grow. If the
floorboards yawn open, just cover the gap with cardboard. Never mind the state
of the downstairs lavatory. A faint aroma of ammonia never hurt anyone. Drip
from the ceiling? Shove a bucket under it.
I tell you why I offer these household tips: they are the only sensible
response to the first policy Ed Miliband has offered the British people. Under a
Labour government, it is now clear, you would run a risk in making any
improvements whatever to your home – because any such effort might lift you over
the limit for Ed’s so-called “mansion tax”.
At which point the state would fine you viciously for any increment in value
over a certain threshold. It is always a relief when your opponent stops ducking
and weaving, and announces what he actually believes in.
At last we can see exactly what kind of a Labour leader Ed Miliband proposes
to be – and he is taking his party right back to the politics of envy and
nihilistic class war that kept them out of office for a generation. The proposal
for a new tax on people’s homes is ill-thought-out, unjust and un-British. It is
colossally unfair on Londoners, since the vast majority of homes that would
currently qualify are in the capital; but then there are plenty of other
properties dotted around the country – family farms, for instance – where the
notional cash value of the buildings would incur a mansion tax far beyond the
ability of the family to pay.
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