Labour’s socialist experiment in Wales should terrify us all.
At the rate it is going, there will be virtually no economy left at all Matthew Lynn 16 November 2023 • 2:43pm Matthew Lynn First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour Mark Drakeford
You can’t drive more than 20 miles an hour across swathes of the country. If you need any public services the civil service is eyeing a four-day week, and there may soon be tourist levies to pay if you feel like visiting despite all this. The Welsh administration has been quietly doing everything it can think of to make life in the country as difficult as possible. Now, it’s taking things a step further, planning what in effect will be the UK’s first “mansion tax”. Under the dismal leadership of Mark Drakeford, Wales is being turned into an experiment in what Joseph Stalin used to call “socialism in one country” – and the results will be catastrophic.
The “mansion tax” has been a favourite of the liberal-Left for the last twenty years, championed at different times by the Liberal Democrats and by the “two Eds” (Miliband and Balls for those with short memories) when they were in charge of Labour policy. Now Wales has decided to try it out. With a revaluation of council tax, the Welsh Assembly is planning to replace the current nine bands with twelve, with punitive extra charges for the most expensive properties. On a house worth £1.2 million or more, you will have to pay an extra £1,000 a year. And of course, that will just be for starters. In every meaningful sense of the word, it will be a “mansion tax”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/16/wales-socialist-experiment-labour-britain/
At the rate it is going, there will be virtually no economy left at all Matthew Lynn 16 November 2023 • 2:43pm Matthew Lynn First Minister of Wales and Leader of Welsh Labour Mark Drakeford
You can’t drive more than 20 miles an hour across swathes of the country. If you need any public services the civil service is eyeing a four-day week, and there may soon be tourist levies to pay if you feel like visiting despite all this. The Welsh administration has been quietly doing everything it can think of to make life in the country as difficult as possible. Now, it’s taking things a step further, planning what in effect will be the UK’s first “mansion tax”. Under the dismal leadership of Mark Drakeford, Wales is being turned into an experiment in what Joseph Stalin used to call “socialism in one country” – and the results will be catastrophic.
The “mansion tax” has been a favourite of the liberal-Left for the last twenty years, championed at different times by the Liberal Democrats and by the “two Eds” (Miliband and Balls for those with short memories) when they were in charge of Labour policy. Now Wales has decided to try it out. With a revaluation of council tax, the Welsh Assembly is planning to replace the current nine bands with twelve, with punitive extra charges for the most expensive properties. On a house worth £1.2 million or more, you will have to pay an extra £1,000 a year. And of course, that will just be for starters. In every meaningful sense of the word, it will be a “mansion tax”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/16/wales-socialist-experiment-labour-britain/
