It was a LibDem policy to bring CGT and other taxes more inline with each other, and what you are referring to was initially a move toward that. To stop dividend earners paying much lower tax than people earning in other ways.

You’ll have to explain your first line to me – I’m not with you?

The dividend thing often gets misrepresented, especially for small business.

For instance – we’ve already paid 20% (up until recently) tax on our profits. So if I then extract them without tax paid for arguments sake – I’ve paid tax at the same rate as PAYE.

But the dividend tax doesn’t do what you think it does, and the benefits of not paying tax on dividends were misrepresented. It was sold as we were not paying tax, well we were, as you need to make a profit to have a dividend. Profit is taxed.

It’s a stealth tax in all but name – but was a cheeky way of looking like the Tories were dealing with Tax avoidance.

It depends on your circumstances and company structure of course.

worker ownership / representation on boards is totally mainstream in Germany

Oh, agreed, and the representation is mandated by the government, and could be here. Ownership is a different matter, and should be encouraged (tax breaks anyone?) but not mandated… the idea of the government forcibly taking chunks out of large companies (with the exception of public services/transport) will send them abroad… and that worries people who work for them or their suppliers/partners.

he would not be Prime Minister?

Whilst it is convention that the PM be a MP I dont think it is strictly necessary. Its one of those convention things as opposed to actual law.
In the past (eg 100 years or so back) they have been from the House of Lords as well as House of Commons. Dont think any not from either although as above I am not sure anything specifically blocks it.

After spending far too much time on Twitter this weekend I’ve come to the sad conclusion that the Tories are going to walk it and we’ll be Brexited about 10 mins later, hopefully (it’s a relative thing) via a the BoJo deal and not ‘no deal’.

I follow a lot of prominent Labour, Plaid and Lib Dems. They’re all very busy sticking the boot into each other, the real Socialist Ultras in Labour despise the Libs more than the Tories, they accept Tories will be Tories but the Libs are somehow worse. The Libs are calling for tactical voting, but only in areas they’re close to winning – they’re less keen in my area that’s been split Labour / Tories for decades with usually a sub 5% win margin, frankly despite their claims I fancy they’d rather take 50 seats and a Tory government than 25 and a labour one, I can’t imagine any of their projections show them wining this one. The sad thing is I reckon they could take more Tory voters, maybe that’s their plan

That’s very much debatable but what is certain is that if Labour follow through on their pledge to take / steal 10% of the value of all private companies with more than 250 staff the immediate effect will be:

1. All U.K. headquartered PLCs will love their HQ for tax purposes
2. The U.K. will lose all of the associated corporation tax
3. Foreign inward investment would cease
4. The country would £100B + worse off
5. The government would become embroiled in a series of international legal cases that would sink Whitehall for a decade or more.

You’ve extrapolated all that from the assumption that they are just going to whack 10% on the rate immediately and sod the consequences. And you’ve decided that fact because you already dislike them. Raising taxes doesn’t have to be done badly, and I see no evidence that they will do it badly.

As for foreign inward investment ceasing? Pfft. Brexit will do far more damage to that. Although Brexit and possibly Labour govt should put paid to 1. above. Your assessment is very simplistic. From what I can see so far McDonnell is cleverer than you, so they still get my vote.

I presumed it was based on the fact the the current PM is always moved to a safe seat to ensure they are not at risk of no longer being an MP and therefore no longer a PM

Has that ever happened?
The role of the PM itself apparently isnt actually defined in law let alone who can hold it. Its one of those roles which has evolved over several centuries to what it is now mostly by taking over more and more of the royal prerogative.
I suspect the Supreme Court are thinking “bugger this could mess up Christmas” and lots of constitutional law professors are getting their cases ready but there is no simple “paragraph d of the PM act 1888 says no. byeee”.
Individual parties could have rules about who can be leader of them and hence PM so might be resolved that way as well.

Has that ever happened?

If it has is can’t have happened in recent times because it would be electorally counter-productive these days. Jacqui Smith and Iain Dale on the ‘For the many Podcast’ seemed to think it’s not really feasible – doing a Chicken run to a safe constituency doesn’t indicate much confidence from a leader. I can’t fault their logic.

Much less damaging just to flood the constituency with activists and do whatever it takes to win the seat.

The risk of losing the seat is less than the damage the chicken run would do.

Johnson’s seat is historically a very safe seat in a very safe area for the Conservative Party, isn’t it?

SDLP are doing the same. Some parties are awake to the importance of this election for the people they seek to represent beyond it just being another general election.

Time for Labour to get onboard in England & Wales.

Johnson’s seat is historically a very safe seat in a very safe area for the Conservative Party, isn’t it?

Yup. However was reduced last time round and considering its a)heavily remain and b)he had that urgent trip to Afghanistan rather than vote against Heathrow expansion, as promised to his constituents, there is more risk than normal for him.

Johnson is also blocking the report on russian interference

but when I read the proposals last year it looked very much like stealth privatisation, with the state taking much of any gains made, not the staff.

What I read about it it seems unlikely the govt would make much out of it unless they tinkered with the thresholds.

through on their pledge to take / steal 10% of the value of all private companies with more than 250 staff the immediate effect will be:

Essentially reserving voting stock in a pool is a long way from stealing value. That sounds like torygraph nonsense. You do realise that boards and CEO s regularly do that to their own shareholders? That’s okay though because its ‘democratic’?

I didn’t find the Dividend tax particularly controversial, other than how quietly they did it. Lots of places gross up dividends for tax purposes to reflect the tax paid by the corporation on the dividend holders behalf and then give a smaller rebate. Small business get a smaller gross up and bigger rebate. It’s pretty progressive.

I’m not really clear on what that means

Won’t make any difference. It’s not different than an institutional investor buying a big block of shares, or the CEO using company money to buy back stock to prove to the board that he/she has increased value and deserves a bigger bonus.

Any trade in a stock affects price, as does a new share issue but that’s true no matter who gets them
It’s actually very American of the Tory/Tory backer s to generate massive fear of government rigging the economy, instead of business doing the same.

As I recall it was £500 in dividends to the staff lifetime and over that to the state. Presumably new employees reset the clock on their portion of the shares The state would never have any control of the shares, not be able to benefit from the sale of them.

Essentially it would make employees a big enough block of shareholders to enable them to have some influence over decisions. It would hinder the board/CEO/institutional or activist investors from making decisions based solely on self interest.

I find it interesting that in places like Germany, which is often accused of deliberately pursuing a policy of wage limiting export driven economic policies, which are not very pro-worker, have the same outcome of employees as shareholders, maybe achieved through diffent means and it is pretty uncontroversial.
Labour proposes a way to achieve the same ends and it is a doomsday scenario on the way to communism. Because of where it came from, not what it says.
Labour haven’t done themselves any favours with some fairly loony economic ideas, which colours perceptions but some of their ideas are pretty sensible and have laudable aims and at least start a conversation or get people thinking about if there is a different way.
And makes them Cannon fodder for some.

Labour haven’t done themselves any favours with some fairly loony economic ideas, which colours perceptions but some of their ideas are pretty sensible and have laudable aims and at least start a conversation or get people thinking about if there is a different way.
And makes them Cannon fodder for some

A decent point but yet again how many of the ideas are actually crackers rather than the interpretation of them we get through the MSM?

how many of the ideas are actually crackers rather than the interpretation of them we get through the MSM?

Not in this case. You can hear it in Long-Bailey’s own words here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009ybq

They are claiming they are going to confiscate 10pc of shares in UK companies over 250FTEs. [1] We all lose 10pc of the value of our pensions.

They are claiming they are going to nationalise businesses and pay what is ominously being described as a ‘fair’ rate rather than the market rate.

[1] Well they aren’t because pensions don’t have to be invested in the UK, and companies don’t have to be listed in the UK so all they’re really doing is forcing companies abroad and making people to change their pension investment options away from UK stocks, but we’re all going to get badly stung in the stampede out of UK stocks whether we have pensions or not.

rather than the interpretation of them we get through the MSM?

They were part of the ‘some’ standing behind the Cannon.

They are claiming they are going to nationalise businesses and pay what is ominously being described as a ‘fair’ rate rather than the market rate.

Ideologically I’m all for this. Bring it on.

I follow a lot of prominent Labour, Plaid and Lib Dems. They’re all very busy sticking the boot into each other, the real Socialist Ultras in Labour despise the Libs more than the Tories, they accept Tories will be Tories but the Libs are somehow worse.

This isn’t a surprise, history has repeatedly proven that the people who the far left really hate are not those on the further right and far right – but centrists and the center left. Some things never change!

If a company does a buy back, do you lose value in your pension?

Buy backs are neutral to the shareholder. (Assuming the shares are bought at the going rate.)

In contrast someone taking 10pc of a company without paying for it isn’t neutral to the shareholders.

Anytime there is a buy back or buy out, an offer is made for shares in what the buyers feel is a fair range. It might be less than current market rates and will certainly be less than market rates after word gets out, which is precisely why they do it that way.
No one worries about that because half the time you aren’t even aware,

No one worries about that because the shareholders can turn down the offer if they think it isn’t good enough!

But what could be the upside for the country? That has to be factored in.

The upside to the country of everyone moving their pensions form UK investments to foreign investments and UK companies listing themselves abroad? Beats me. There are advantages to employee share ownership of course, and many companies sell employees shares at a discount. Since it’s a good thing how about we collectively pay for it rather than just people who are dumb enough to have pensions? Are Nurses and teachers and other people in the state sector allowed to switch their pensions out of UK stocks the way most of us are? If not will they be compensated?