Green Taxes

One of the most depressing things that happened over the weekend was the revelation that one of the motiviations for the Tory revival was a dislike for Green Taxes. As someone who's all about the green revolution this is worrying. You can never expect people to be supportive of tax increases, a tax is a tax is a tax, but when it's something that people are motivated against then this a cause for major concern. A consensus among the parties over green issues is going to be almost impossible if there are lots of votes waiting for anyone who crosses the picket line.

These people who are revolting against the green taxes tend to be those hallowed suburbanites who are a mythical and inexplicable race to a metropolitan elitist like myself. So any presumptions as to why they think anything are exactly that. Presumptious. But hey what's a blog for.

1) They're right. There's been little in the way of clear green motivation for the tax increases Brown and Darling have put on fuel etc. They're in a public finances hole and they need to put taxes up. They feel unable to raise direct taxes and so they put up some indirect taxes and mutter that it's all about green incentives. There is very little in the way of a coherent green strategy; they're building more roads, more runways, coal fired powers stations, so people have every reason to be cynical about the government's motivations.

2) Labour couldn't sell water to a man dying of thirst. And most people reckon they'd try. The brand is toxic. Not to everyone, although many are might fed up with it. But to that brand of suburbanite who often was never particularly fond of them, they are now the devil incarnate. Labour could come up with the most brilliant policy in history tomorrow and people would still hate them and it. I think those who are interested in the green agenda need to think very carefully about whether it's sensible to back Labour currently.

3) These guys aren't very green. Alex Singleton tries to square the circle in his piece by insisting that most people are trying to be green. The taxes are just not helping. I don't really believe this (although as I said I don't spend too much time with these guys). People are very dubious about whether anything really needs to be done. And certainly whether anything needs to be done by them. Big business? absolutely. Provided they don't raise their prices. Government? definitely the incompetent bastards, provided they don't tax me more to pay for it. Me personally? No. I've got enough on my plate.

It's hard for someone who has so little on their plate that they have time to blog to argue too much with this. But I think we do need to keep going with raising genuine awareness and most importantly looking at the easy things we can get people doing. More on that later.