There is plenty with which Common Weal agrees or has sympathy with in the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce’s list of asks from the Chancellor in the upcoming budget. The question isn't whether these policies would be good, it's how they are treated in public discourse.
Because what they amount to is a request for enormous amounts of subsidy without any suggestion at all how this is to be paid for. This is a continual issue. There are two interests which are treated more as religion than science when it comes to budgets – business interests and defence. Both have their political interests protected by a lack of scrutiny.
So what is the Chamber of Commerce asking for? It wants a cut to employer taxes on payroll (the Employer National Insurance contribution rises). We agree; they penalise precisely the wrong thing, employment. But we are open – the tax income should be replaced by increasing taxes on corporate profits (Corporation Tax). No indication is given of how the Chamber sees this being paid for.
Then they want measures taken to cut energy costs. We all want that. But since that is an ask that is coming from the British Chambers of Commerce and Aberdeen's CoC is aggressively lobbying for oil and gas interests, it can only be assumed that again what they want is public subsidy and tax cuts, not regulation or taxation of profiteering oil and gas firms.
We also support the concept of locally-driven export support investment. We called for an export agency to be set up to reduce the bureaucratic weight of exporting to the EU and recognised that it would require funding. But we are honest about wanting to raise more tax. Who is paying for this export support?
While we do not support the sort of 'regional development' that the business sector does (which are not really about local democracy but about providing power bases for business interests, along the highly neoliberal model of Manchester), we are clearly in favour of decentralisation and we are clear that there has to be investment in lower tiers of democracy.
So we want to reform the Council Tax and bring in a Land Tax to pay for it. Where is the funding to be found for large budgets for regional devolved administrations? And is the assumption that the purpose of these is purely to serve business? Are there to be no social service roles for these local authorities? What are the real social priorities here?
Then they want tax relief on city centre development. Once again, Common Weal is clear that one of the biggest problems for city centres is the cost of operating – but that is driven more by commercial property prices than by tax. So why are the profits of equity capital (who own city centre properties) to be protected by giving businesses tax cuts so they can pass them straight on to landlords?
We would like to see an aggressive strategy for bringing rents in the city centre down to viable levels that the market can sustain. Is that not the underlying basis of capitalism? If prices are too high, should the market not bring them down? Why is it the job of the taxpayer to distort the market to save the investments of global equity funds?
But the requests for tax relief aren't over. Once again, we find ourselves completely aligned with the aim of wanting to save historic buildings in Glasgow. Tax relief for negligent owners seems like just about the worst way to do that. We need a use-it-or-lose-it law and a properly funded compulsory purchase model with real public investment to make sure that buildings are brought to life, not that the financial speculators who bought and neglected them can get their money back.
The point is that if Common Weal put out a list of asks like this it would be unlikely we would get it into the media. It would not be considered credible, an endless list of demands for cash to be given to our pet causes without any explanation of what is to be cut to pay for it.
It comes at the end of a week when we see the reality gap between what defence interests say and what they do. Through the last few years we have been being bombarded with relentless defence industry propaganda generating fear that Britain is undefended and demanding more money for defence. That is the theory that is pushed by the propaganda.
The reality is that we are spending the money not on protecting Britain but on bombing the Houthi rebels on behalf of Saudi Arabia. The disconnect between what is said and what is done is enormous, presumably because asking the public to pay more tax to send bombers to help out the autocratic dictatorship of the Saudis is not likely to be met sympathetically.
Let's be honest; compared to the compelling case for investment in decarbonisation, energy, poverty and social infrastructure, these cases are weak and filled with holes. And yet realistically, who is going to prevail in the budget and who will not?
Modern politics always wants you to believe it is rational and pseudo-scientific. It is nothing of the sort. It is about power and access and wealth.