News & Insight

The latest news, analysis and opinion from the Fabian Society including highlights from the Fabian Review and web-exclusive commentary and insight.

Real choices: The centre-left needs to be pragmatic on tax

8 January 2015

Tax has always been the ground on which elections are won and lost, and the battle in the run up to next May looks no different. David Cameron wheeled out £7.2bn of income tax cuts at conference, which will undoubtedly...

Virtue and vice: Labour needs to shift tax burdens to unearned wealth

7 January 2015

One of the best things Einstein ever said was about the complexity of filing a tax return: “this is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher”. He meant that the act of filing a return raises the implicit...

Thinking positive: The power of putting in your share of taxes

6 January 2015

I voted in my first general election back in 1992. Yet, in all my active democratic life, a mainstream party has never stood up and presented tax as a good thing. Neil Kinnock, whose famous tax hikes supposedly lost him...

Taking tax out of the ‘Too Difficult Box’

5 January 2015

Tax is at the heart of the relationship between the citizen and the state. The fundamental conflicts around John Hampden’s trial in 1637 for his refusal to pay King Charles’s taxes for ship money, and the Boston Tea Party in...

Labour must take a tougher stance on TTIP

5 January 2015

It’s largely off the front pages and out of the headlines, but the secretive negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP) will change trade between the EU and the US, potentially permanently. As the general election approaches, Labour must...

Our essential books of 2014: Please, Mister Postman by Alan Johnson

24 December 2014

When Emily Thornberry tweeted a picture of a house in Kent draped in St George’s Cross flags, it wasn’t just a momentary lapse in manners which led many to feel the episode was so damaging. The tweet gave life to...

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