Who pays?

The 2019 Tory general election manifesto committed a future Conservative government to not raising National Insurance contributions. In making today's announcement that a 1.25% rise in NI contributions was to be used to fund the NHS and social care, they were breaking that pledge in the most flagrant manner imaginable, and in so doing they revealed their confidence. That confidence is not misplaced; faced with an opposition in disarray, they will be able to bolster support from the kind of reactionary collectivism which holds that we are all in it together, and should all muck in -- especially for so dear a cause as healthcare: this is the kind of view which has no problem with the NHS being funded by Captain Tom walking laps of his garden.

The job of the left in a situation like this is to raise the question 'who should pay?' and not to accept the answer that we all should, since this 'we' is, in capitalist society, a mythical entity. We are not all in it together. Some of 'us' struggle with low pay and increasing living costs, and can scarcely afford an increase in any tax. Meanwhile billionaires will be unaffected by the rise; National Insurance is a tax on income, not wealth. The demand for a wealth tax as an alternative means of funding health and social care, ideally linked to a revival of Labour's Corbyn-era plans for a National Care Service, would be welcome. Labour's front bench will not make this demand, so it will have to come from the grassroots. Also from the grassroots of the labour movement can come the insistence that we refuse to be put out of pocket by the NI increase, that it be taken into account and compensated for in wage settlements this year. If unions got behind this demand, it would effectively shift the cost of the increase from labour to capital, and would provide a welcome bottom-up answer to the question 'who pays?'