Magic cure-alls

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There is a time in the history of these islands which the English, in particular, like to refer to as the Dark Ages, a time when the culture and practices of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes etc gradually displaced those of the Romanised Celts and much learning was lost. Seen from the perspective of those who lived in what the same people like to refer to as the ‘Celtic fringes’, and most especially Ireland, those ages were not as dark as they have been painted by those who relate the Anglo-centric history of the British Isles. But, whatever we call that period, medical practice at the time often resorted to a single ‘cure’. Whatever the ailment, the answer was invariably a course of blood-letting by the application of leeches.

We generally like to think that we’ve moved on from those simplistic times, and have a more sophisticated approach to medicine, but vestiges of that approach still linger when it comes to economics, particularly in the Tory Party. For economic conservatives (and the small ‘c’ is deliberate, since this particular affliction infects the Labour Party as well as the Tories, and is not entirely unknown in other parties either), the solution to all problems is tax cuts. If the economy is doing well, then the government can afford to cut taxes; if it is doing badly, then it will be improved by cutting taxes. There is, in fact, no combination of economic circumstances in which cutting tax is not the solution (even if they can’t fully define the problem – although that lack of definition never worried the purveyors of leeches either). They can’t justify or explain how the cure works, it boils down to an assumption that if you only believe something strongly enough, then it will become true. As I recall, it’s an approach which worked for Tinkerbell in the pantomime, but I’ve yet to encounter any real life evidence of its efficacy. It reminds me a bit of that other pointless debate, which may or may not have happened during medieval times, about the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin.

Cutting taxes isn’t necessarily what they actually do, of course; it’s more about what they say they’re doing or going to do. It’s not easy to achieve record levels of taxation whilst actually cutting taxes, although no-one would understand that from listening to what Sunak et al repeatedly claim is happening. It’s more of a theoretical treatment than an actual one. I guess that means that we have moved on in some ways at least: there were probably more than a few medieval patients who ended up wishing that the application of leeches was as theoretical as a modern-day Tory tax cut.

Doctor Hunt was at it again yesterday, prescribing a course of theoretical tax cuts which he will announce later this year mostly to take effect after he’s been voted out of office, at which point any Tories left après le déluge will feel free to criticise Labour either for letting down the patients by not implementing them, or else for letting down the patients by recklessly implementing a policy which they know to be utter folly. Given the reaction of Labour in saying that they’ll support any tax cuts in the budget as long as they don’t break Labour’s entirely arbitrary fiscal rule (which, at a guess, means that they’ll also support the spending cuts needed to pay for the tax cuts), it’s more likely to be the latter. And that other well-known panacea, austerity, worked so well last time round.