It should come as little surprise that the Brexit Party announced this weekend that it will scrap inheritance tax if elected into government.
Nigel Farage’s Party is overwhelmingly funded by donations from a super-rich rich elite linked to tax havens, think tanks and private members’ clubs.
MEP Richard Tice said the so-called death tax – which currently has a threshold of as much as £950,000 – would be “scrapped altogether” under the Brexit Party.
£5 billion-worth of tax receipts torn up, just like that, and another fiscal blow for an already beleaguered HMRC.
See the state shrivel
Not that it will matter to their super-rich donors.
They’d happily see the state shrivel if it meant they could ring-fence more of their bloated earnings.
Jeremy Hosking – a major donor who has links to a series of tax havens – isn’t going to fret if local services get cut to the bone.
Nor is Chris Harborne, who is linked to a total of five companies in the Panama Papers and would much rather see a Singapore on the Thames than a comprehensive welfare state.
Power and influence
Indeed, it chimes with Leave mantra from the very beginning.
By Farage’s own admission Britain will not be better off outside the EU, it will “just be self-governing”.
That’s why ‘taking back control’ was the focal campaigning point during the referendum rather than prosperity or welfare – because it has never really been about that.
When the government’s own analysis shows a no-deal Brexit could leave the UK economy 6.3 per cent to 9 per cent smaller after 15 years, compared to what it would have been, that should ring alarm bells.
But for Brexiteers it never did.
They prioritised control, power and influence, and by some miracle it has been a model many ordinary people have subscribed to.
Taking notice
And there’s a good reason why.
Britain’s best-selling newspapers have been shelling a torrent of pro-Leave stories since way before the campaign on Britain’s membership even began.
Readers of The Sun, The Telegraph and The Express had already been warmed to ideas of ‘taking back control’, even though the shape of a banana is hollow succor to a man about to lose his job.
But to the owners of said newspapers, the power and influence they will be handed if and when Britain does leave the European Union is of great value.
As Rupert Murdoch once said, the reason he is so opposed to the European Union is because when he goes into Downing Street they do what he says; when he goes to Brussels they take no notice.
Brexit is a movement for the super-rich by the super-rich. There’s little point us pretending otherwise.
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