It remains to be seen whether the large donations
given to Reform Ltd by two economic migrants a week or so ago will still be
legal when legislation going through parliament is actually enacted. Although
the government was very clear in advance that the legislation would be
backdated to the date it was announced, the level of detail needed to know
whether a particular donation would or would not be legal was not provided. We
do know that Farage and his team have said that the economic migrants concerned
have asked for, and will get, nothing in return. Their donations might help to elect a government
sympathetic to their modus operandi, but that will just be a fortunate (for
them) coincidence.
One of the things that the money will be used for,
according to the company, is the development of policy. Whilst the donations won’t
determine the nature of the policies developed, it is not entirely unreasonable
to suppose that the donors are unlikely to want to fund the development of policies
which might impact them financially in a negative way. Again, that will just be
coincidence, not cause-and-effect.
We’ve had a taster of the sort of policies which
might emerge in this
report today. We don’t know who has funded the work – ‘think-tanks’ are notoriously
shy when it comes to financial transparency concerning their own activities. The
organisation is described, though, as being “linked to Reform”, a
formula (not unique to Reform Ltd; most parties seem to use similar mechanisms)
which frequently allows policies to be floated with a degree of credible
deniability should that be felt necessary.
Amongst the policy proposals are the abolition of
capital gains tax and inheritance tax, along with a number of pension schemes
enjoyed by public servants, including teachers. Oh, and the abolition of the
state pension, which would be reduced to a means-tested benefit available only
to the very poorest of pensioners. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to work out
who might be the beneficiaries of such a policy. Those who see paying pensions
as “unaffordable” seem to see reducing taxes on the wealthiest as entirely
affordable. I can’t imagine a couple of billionaire economic migrants being
exactly displeased if their donations were to lead to such policies. It would,
of course, be another of those amazing coincidences rather than any form of
quid pro quo.
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