ANOTHER VOICE
Among the neater, sweeter maidens in a cleaner, greener land
AUBERON WAUGH
I wish him better luck this week, but quite possibly the Tories will be too busy asking themselves important questions to have time for such things. The smart ques- tion of the moment is: are we rattled enough? — but I would like to see them addressing even more profound matters, enshrined in what I call the Septimus Ques- tions, so called after my brother Septimus who, when travelling alone in France, would stop strange Frenchmen in the street and ask: 'Who am I? Where am I going?'
In a thoughtful article in this week's Sun- day Telegraph Andrew Gimson, a former deputy editor of this magazine and a self- proclaimed Tory, explains why he hopes Labour will win the next general election. I respect all his arguments but cannot quite agree with his conclusion. By Labour's tax- ation proposals, as they have been intelli- gently assessed, I would be paying an extra £12,500 a year in direct taxes even before Labour has redrawn local taxation to include some sort of local income tax.
It is all very well to say that we should not allow such sordid considerations to influence our politics, but many of us are not all that tremendously much interested in politics. Others may be less severely affected than I am, but others are probably even less interested in politics. Practically none of us sees the few and tentative politi- cal conclusions we may have reached in the same light as the early Christians saw their religion — something for which they would happily be roasted on a gridiron, boiled in oil or stuck with arrows like a pincushion at any hour of the day or night. Which is why I continue to hope that the Tories will win, however bereft of exciting new ideas they may seem to be. `Defeatism masquerading as pragmatism has resumed its sway,' writes Gimson, recording that the intention to reduce the standard rate of income tax to 20p has been abandoned, and public expenditure is once again, wickedly enough, being let off its leash in the run-up to an election. But hop- ing for a Labour victory seems to me the ultimate defeatism. The poll tax debacle should have taught the Young Turks a les- son, but there are plenty of useful things that Tory governments can do unobtrusive- ly, without making a song and dance about them.
When Nigel Lawson abolished the sur- charge of 15 per cent on investment or 'sav- ings' income, practically no one noticed, he did it so quietly. There might be a good case for putting a surcharge on so-called `earned' incomes. One could point out that we want to encourage investment, acid dis- courage wage-rises, that practically no one in Britain does any work for their so-called `earned' incomes anyway.
But that would be provocative. A subtler approach might be to encourage savings by a slightly advantageous rate of income tax on investment income — let us say a flat rate of 20 per cent deducted at source, rather than a standard rate of 25 per cent after allowances rising to a punitive rate of 40 per cent for champion savers like the Duke of Westminster, as at present. But even this would require a sort of soft-shoe shuffle of which I fear the Conservatives are incapable since Nigel Lawson and Sir Geoffrey Howe left the corridors of power.
The plan to sell off the railways will win no votes and might easily lose some. It has the attraction, which selling off the family silver always has, of providing some instant cash for current expenditure. If my family silver consisted of an inefficient, loss-mak- ing industry staffed by tannoy freaks and anti-smoking fanatics, I would sell it like a shot. But I am afraid that so far as votes are concerned, the best policy would be to sub- sidise the wretched railways — as every other country in Europe subsidises them.
Last week Mr Major revealed an eager- ness to reduce inheritance tax, or at any rate to raise the threshold at which this iniquitous tax on widows and orphans becomes payable. At present it produces about £1.2 billion considerably less than 1 per cent of total government revenue. It is immensely expensive to collect, and casts a blight over the whole country, undermin- ing not only pride in ownership but the whole concept of private property which, as I never tire of pointing out, is what distin- guishes civilised man from the savage, free men from slaves.
Perhaps a stamp duty might be payable on the transfer of property, in token of the legal system's residual responsibility for protecting the rights of property against burglary, unlawful appropriation, 'ram- bling' etc. But the idea of a punitive, confis- catory tax must be abhorrent to all except madmen.
A simple measure, which would make gigantic inroads into solving the unemploy- ment problem, would be to make the wages of domestic servants tax-allowable, as every other form of employment is. Unemploy- ment is not a temporary phenomenon, as I say, but a permanent one, under technolog- ical change, unless some such measure is adopted. Between the wars, domestic ser- vice was still the biggest single course of employment. Today, it has all but vanished from the scene.
I do not need to stress what a profound and beneficial effect its restoration would have on the British social scene. Class antagonisms would be replaced by a new concordia ordinum. The brutal, mindless proletarian culture which, under Mrs Thatcher, threatened to take over the com- manding heights of the media and the arts, will be subjected once again to the gentle, liberal bourgeois influences which gov- erned this country for so long. A new respect and a new inter-dependence will be born.
No one in the world has ever been politer to their servants than the English. Hard as it is to imagine now, as we contem- plate the Gazza generation, the English once made the best servants in the world.
When I put it to Nigel Lawson that he could save the country in this way, he looked crafty and said its effect would be to subsidise those who already had butlers and nannies without encouraging new employ- ers. This seems obviously wrong. My pro- posal, which would also go some way to remedying the housing problem, is not one to wave before the electorate, or even to debate with great noise before the confer- ence. It is one to be discussed quietly in smoke-filled rooms over the port, brandy or fizzy peach wine before the lights are turned down, clothes are taken off and the serious business starts.
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