Great Political Porkies of Our Time (Pt 1)
There's a few people out there who've said this is little more than an exercise in Blair bashing. There are also a few who've dared us to give examples of misleading/misrepresentative statements/lies.
In an effort to show we're not anti-Blair, we're anti-lying, our first example harks back to the heady halcyon days when Thatcher was little more than a coiffured pimple on Jim Callaghan's bum. This also serves as a great example of how hard it is to legally pin down a lie when you're dealing with wily politicians.
Believe it or not, VAT is a relatively new concept, originally introduced in the 40's it became known as the Value Added Tax we now love so dearly in 1973. As stealth taxes go, it's a cracker. Every purchase you make as a consumer gives 17.5% of its value to Gordon Brown and Co. That means if you work an 8 hour day, five days a week - last Friday, you spent 7 out of 8 hours working for the government (and that's after they've taken a bite out of your salary for income tax and N.I.). If you're paying income tax at 40%, you're working for the government nearly 3 out of 5 days a week .
In Callaghan's day, Britain had one of the highest rates of income tax in the world but VAT was at 8%. Thatcher tabled a motion for a vote of no-confidence in Callaghan's Labour Government and by one vote forced a general election.
In the run up to the election Thatcher promised income Tax cuts, "Bollocks" said Callaghan (bear with me, I'm paraphrasing here), "You can only afford to cut income tax if you double the rate of VAT".
Thatcher's response was steadfast - "We will not double it !"
Thatcher won the election in May and in June, Geoffrey Howe's first budget upped VAT to 15%. Now that's not doubling it. Technically Thatcher didn't lie.
The recent spat between Dominic Lawson and George Osborne (Shadow Chancellor) over Osborne's denial that Thatcher promised tax cuts in the '79 manifesto is a decent example of Orwell's Ministry of Truth in action. An inconvenient truth and the politicians re-write history.
Here's the cutting from the '79 manifesto.
Would Thatcher have been caught by our "Misrepresentation of the People Act " ? And if not - should she have been ?
For this Bill to work, you would need to remove the inconsistency with regard to the mens rea required to constitute the offence. Section 1 states the offence may be committed "recklessly or with intent to deceive", whereas in Section 3.2 lack of intent to deceive can be a defence, effectively excluding the possibility of a conviction for recklessness. So, which is it? Intent or recklessness? A choice needs to be made..."