George Osborne is apparently 'very interested in the proposals'. David Cameron is reportedly 'right behind this one'. In his shared backbench MP's office, Ben Gummer is probably 'squealing with glee like a piggy at feeding time', and 'doing a little dance'.
Gummer is heir to an unlikely political dynasty. His father was John Selwyn Gummer, Tory vice-chair during the Thatcher era, but best remembered by the public for what he did as Agriculture Secretary under Major: He fed his four-year-old daughter a beefburger in front of a mob of press cameras at the height of the mad cow disease crisis.
These days, John Selwyn is Lord Gummer, and the 33-year-old Gummer Junior has picked up a seat next to daddy's old constituency in Ipswich. Possessor of a double-starred first from Cambridge, he has all the terrifying ambition that degree implies, and has now finally found a way to make the political mark he craves.
You wouldn't, he asserted when he spoke in the Commons last Thursday, buy a mobile phone contract from someone who refused to give you an itemised invoice for it. So why should taxes be any different? Why shouldn't the government send you a letter detailing, line-by-line, where your money went?
Most taxpayers take it as an article of faith that you shovel your money into a hole in the wall, then it is involved in a mystery as ineffable as the Transubstantiation Of The Eucharist, then you do it again next year. But if his bill passes, everyone will receive a letter from the Exchequer each year, laying out every penny. If, say, you earn an average salary of £25,500, you'll pay nearly £6000 in tax. Your 'share' of government spending will divvy up like this: you'll be contributing £339 to defence; £829 to education; and £1094 to the NHS.Then there's a stonking £2080 paid out to 'pensions and benefits' – which includes an amount of £212 for people who need help paying their rent and £296 to help out the nation's disabled or infirm. You will also be given notice of your 'share' of the national debt – which currently stands at just over £2000 per British human.
Osborne, the brains behind the Tory strategy for the next election, clearly sees in this a chance to completely swivel the national conversation towards a more Conservative perspective. No longer will he have to go on TV to be met with a series of salad-wristed BBC bleeding-hearts arguing we should give more iPads to immigrants. He will be able to throw the question straight back in the public's face: Well, what's it worth to you? The tone moves from a focus on the joys of 'spend': a better NHS, better schools, greener policies or money for flood defences, to one that emphasises 'tax'. Yeah, foreign aid's alright. But would you pay 60 quid a year for it? Or £90 for roads? The immediate plus would be to galvanise the public behind clipping the wings of two grands' worth of welfare state. But in a more long-term way, Labour would be snookered. Everything they want costs money. And not inconceivable, woozy billions any more: real, imaginable, money that could go on EasyJet flights.
Gummer will rise rapidly through the ranks, be lavished with some happy office on Whitehall, where he will hope to see out his days in the permanent Tory government his proposal makes inevitable.
Unfortunately, for the price of this short-term gain, he will have destabilised the entire political system irrevocably. Britain will become a nation of armchair generals. Gummer spoke of a 'national water-cooler moment' and that is what he will get: men in pubs carving up the fiscal picture like they were analysing the Arsenal back four. Why, most will point out, is the average taxpayer spending only weasely amounts on policing (£116), and frankly pathetic amounts on really important stuff like banging people up (the £44 contributed to prisons)? Why not let our belts out here and rein them in on the boring stuff?
That eternal tabloid refrain “More bobbies on the beat”, will become unignorably fierce. Politicians will be forced to compete frantically to put more plods on our streets, until it is the major item on expenditure: you'll walk out of your door, and all you'll see will be luminous reflective vests, walkie-talking to each other as they move across the high street like migrating herds of buffalo. Ten percent of everyone will be in jail forever, and crime will drop to near zero, until one Tuesday the entire nation is wiped out by an Iranian nuke because someone thought they were being super-smart in wiping 50 quid off of the nation's tax bill by cancelling Trident. At this point, the few stray survivors will hang Ben Gummer's body in a gibbet at the gates of their fort capital in the ruins of Westfield Stratford City, as a permanent warning to others not to be such a clever dick.@HurtGavinHaynesIllustration by Joss FrankPreviously: Quango - What Do You Have to Do to Lose a Knighthood?
