A King’s Ransom

Each year our government spends more and more. And achieves less and less.

Long Live The King! As the Coronation of Charles III transitions from the front pages to the history books I thought it might be nice to take a moment and compare our favourite bits.

Because there was plenty to enjoy. Perhaps my favourite bit was how, with immense forethought, privacy loving Prince Harry managed to strategically conceal himself for most of the ceremony, from the intrusive eyes of the world’s media, behind his aunt’s extravagantly feathered chapeau. As he no doubt planned, the cameras could barely catch a glimpse of him. Bravo Harry! That special ops training really paid off.

Even watching the events at home was an emotional experience. Only the truly stone of heart could have failed to be moved, at some point, to wish there was a special red button on your TV remote, which you could press at will, to make the intrusive and pointless Hugh Edwards, how can I put this?…. STFU. (‘Here comes the new king, he’s wearing his mum’s hat, I’m talking over the choir now, adding nothing of value, there’s another three hours of this.’)

But perhaps my most enduring Coronation Day memory involved sitting in a sauna, listening to an Australian man tell his sweaty friend, how the whole Royal problem could have been solved years ago, if only the English had simply chopped a few royal heads off.

Perhaps. But it’s worth noting, that summarily offing European royals is basically what gave us Soviet Russia, and modern France. So not exactly a brilliant track record. Still. He seemed keen.

The ‘problem’ as he saw it, was that King Charles was personally worth millions of quids, and he, an Australian man sitting semi naked in a sauna in central London, with me and a few others, wasn’t. And that of course, wasn’t fair.

So his solution was pretty straightforward. Simply take all King Charles’ money away from him in what he described as a ‘peaceable revolution’ , and what I would describe as ‘an act of theft’.

Because you might not like it, but either that money (and we’re talking about Charles million of pounds in personal wealth here, not the £46bn of Crown assets which already belong to the state, but which he ‘oversees’) either belongs to him, or it doesn’t. It’s not a grey area. We have property rights.

And so taking it away from him, however justified you might feel in doing so, is simply stealing. But of course some people think stealing is OK. If you’re stealing from rich people. Or people you don’t like.

But listen, I understand that there are a lot of republicans out there. Maybe you’re one of them. And perhaps I would be a republican too, if I didn’t genuinely think that the alternative to King Charles III would inevitably be, President Tony Blair I.

Shudder.

So let’s just go with it. And imagine that Crocodile Dundee got his way and somehow we managed to kick Charles off his throne and pinch all his loot. What did our antipodean Robin Hood think would happen then?

Did he somehow imagine that all those castles and paintings and jewels and assorted chests full of twinkling booty would all be sold off by the government at the best possible price (shout out to Gold Bug Gordon Brown) and the proceeds then distributed fairly, equally, and without fear or favour to all the nation’s needy?

Did he imagine a line of urchin children, soot of face and bare of foot, stretching from Blackfriars to Buckingham Place, grubby hands outstretched, ready to gratefully receive their fair share of greedy King Charles’ riches?

Maybe. But of course that would never happen. Because if the £400bn we just squandered on largely unnecessary COVID lockdowns has actually bought us anything, it’s the sure and certain knowledge, that where there’s gold, there’s grift.

What would happen would be this.

To ensure it was all fair and above board. A scrupulously independent (non) Royal Commission would be set up to decide what to do with all the King’s cash.

It would take that scrupulously independent Royal Commission about ten years and a few million pounds to eventually come to the enlightened conclusion that the King’s money should not be handed out willy nilly to, you know, poor people, who might waste it on scratch cards, Call of Duty and cider.

They’d conclude it would be much better spent instead by sensible people, the sort of people who really knew the value of things, people with taste, a sense of propriety, decency and decorum, patrons of the arts, smart people with the nation’s interests at heart.

Just the sort of people, in fact, who were usually appointed to scrupulously independent Royal Commissions. People who could be 100% trusted to spend a massive wedge of kingly cash on the sort of projects, schemes, enterprises and boondoggles that people on scrupulously independent Royal Commissions liked to spend other people’s money on. Yes, the King’s cash would be safe in the hands of those sort of people.

And just to prove how genuinely smart they really were, the scrupulously independent Royal Commission would also funnel off a large portion of the riches into a slush fund to buy off the grievance industry.

That way any ‘stakeholder’ who could make the loosest claim that the Royal cash had actually been stolen from them in the first place long ago by someone with a statue, would get paid off with a hefty chunk. As would anyone who could claim that their ‘lived experiences had been adversely affected by the systemic racism of monarchy’. Or something.

Finally leaving any remaining balance to be spent wisely, carefully and fairly, on legal fees, administration costs, impact statements, consultations, and harrowing, but necessary, fact finding missions to some of the choicest and loveliest parts of Tuscany.

And so on, until inevitably. Tough luck urchins. But sadly there’s nothing left for you.

Think I’m being unfairly hyperbolic? Then I give you: The UK COVID 19 Inquiry.

The official inquiry into the covid fiasco has cost £114 million before a single hearing has been held. It looks set to take about ten years and already

‘the “core participants” of the inquiry are arguing for a much wider range of issues to be considered, including the effect of a decade of austerity, structural racism in the UK, violence against doctors and NHS staff progression.’

They’ve not even started, and already it’s a grifter’s charter.

And it’s not even like we don’t know what the final verdict will be.

In seven to ten years this comprehensive, hard hitting and in-depth Covid inquiry will reveal: The government didn’t lock down soon enough, hard enough, or long enough. The NHS was amazing. Boris Johnson was useless. Nothing Sweden did, or the policies it implemented, were in any way relevant to the UK. The vaccine roll out was a world beating example of the amazing NHS at its amazing best. Matt Hancock is a dick. And it would have all been over in half the time if it wasn’t for anti-vaxxers, covidiots and selfish granny killers, demanding they got their rights back.

They could honestly save the country the half a billion quid it’s likely to end up costing, if they sacked the inquiry committee tomorrow, and just did what any conscientious student would do, and got ChatGPT to write the whole thing.

Though I’ve thankfully never seen Sir Keir Starmer with his top off, I am reminded of my sauna loving republican friend and his World Beating Scheme For Total Fairness (TM) whenever I hear Sir Keir describe how, after the next election, he plans to make Britain a more equal, prosperous, productive and generally nicer country, by taking away other people’s money.

He’s been all over the press recently, sketching out Labour’s fiscally responsible and business friendly plans for government. Which after careful and thorough study on my part, I can conclude basically comes down to a clever scheme, to tax the crap out of everything.

He’s not going to take away your money of course. God no. Just the greedy people’s. He won’t increase the taxes on hard working families like us. No way! Only companies he decides have been ‘profiteering’. (Which I guess means, making a profit.) He won’t target regular folk. That would be nuts. Just the unacceptably wealthy who are already trousering a fortune thanks to unfairly low rates of capital gains tax. He won’t be taking your savings. Heaven forfend. He’ll just make sure that finally, the broadest shoulders bear the heaviest load. etc. etc.

It’s a great plan. Just take all the bad people’s money, and spread it around among the good people. What’s not to like?

Well, just like my Australian friend’s scheme to relieve King Charles of his riches and redistribute them among the needy. It might not be such a fair and equitable plan after all.

Because if you start off by thinking that someone like greedy King Charles, or a successful businessman or woman has ‘too much’ money, or more money than he ‘needs’, or runs an enterprise that makes ‘excessive’ profits, then pretty soon you’re deciding what is the ‘correct’ amount of money everyone should be ‘allowed’ to have, and finding a way to take away the rest.

And once you start basing your tax policy on virtue, using the tax code to punish the unworthy, and taking money from people, or companies on the grounds that they clearly don’t need or deserve it. Where do you stop?

What starts as a windfall tax on greedy profiteering oil companies, or a one-off, never to be repeated ‘mansion’ tax for ‘Russian billionaires’, can soon become a permanent ‘super levy’ imposed on anyone with a bigger house, nicer car, or who takes posher holidays than you.

And if you think your own meagre savings are going to be safe from Starmer’s rapacious clutches because you work hard, are a good person, and so deserve to keep the lion’s share of the money you make, then I’ve got a hundred pinch faced Guardian readers already lined up, tell you why you don’t.

Not the most fashionable take, but maybe if our government spent a little more time helping the poor make themselves richer, rather than obsessing about making the rich poorer. We might actually achieve something.

Instead politicians, mainly, but by no means exclusively, from the Left, go around telling poor people that the only reason they’re poor is because the rich have nicked all their money.

As if the rich don’t create wealth, start businesses, pay taxes, employ people, and at the very basic level, spend their money in this country, and thus significantly contribute to funding our vital public services.

And nope, I’m not advocating the ‘failed theory of trickle down economics’. I’m just pointing out you can bang as many pots and pans as you like. But you can’t run a health service on virtue alone.

The Left is the political equivalent of Injury 4U Lawyers. ‘Your life has gone wrong and it’s someone else’s fault. Call us NOW! And we’ll make them pay!’

And talking of money. When exactly did we start accepting that the only reason the state cannot fix the obvious deficiencies of this nation is because it lacks the funds to do so?

It’s clearly nonsense.

The most ironically named of all government departments, the Office of Budget Responsibility, predicts government spending for 2023-2024 to be £1189bn.

It’s a genuinely staggering amount of money.

The tax burden is the highest it has ever been in British history and it still isn’t enough. This year, the government borrowed an extra £132bn. From our grandchildren.

£1189bn. That represents  46.2% of all the money made in the country in the entire year.

£42,000 for each and every household. Which supposedly is being spent, even in a roundabout way, for our benefit.

Do you feel that the state is splurging £42k on your family? Treating you to £42k worth of goodies? Of course not. Because so much of it is going on admin costs, interest payments on the national debt, final salary pensions for civil servants. Plus environmental subsidies, foreign aid, and the costs of government.

And yes. The sainted NHS.

From the way our politicians talk you’d think that 97% of your taxes went to paying ‘hardworking nurses’ wages, rather than the reality. Which is, and I crunched the numbers, that 97% doesn’t.

The rest is spent on a police force which refuses to arrest anyone. A transport system that doesn’t go anywhere. That health service which doesn’t treat anyone. An armed service which can’t fight anyone. And significantly, a civil service that seems to consider democratic instruction as optional.

Add to that a welfare system which keeps over five million people dependent on benefits. And no wonder there’s no money left.

We’re constantly being told that the NHS is on the bones of its arse (sorry American readers-er ‘Down to its last nickel’ maybe). And that Britain’s public services face a funding crisis. But if our public services are really so desperate for cash, wouldn’t it be a good idea to encourage people with lots of it, to come here and spend it?

Instead Tory government policy, endorsed and encouraged by Labour, seems to be to export as many wealthy, talented people and their businesses as possible, and import as many skill-less, poor people as Britain has hotel rooms.

If our government, any government, Labour, Tory or god help us Liberal Democrat, can’t do everything it wants to do with £1189bn a year, then maybe, just maybe, it is trying to do too much. Wasting an ever larger proportion of our nation’s wealth, on an ever growing list of things, we neither need or want.

I turned on the TV the other day to be greeted by an advert for The NHS. Yes! The NHS is advertising! Apparently it needs to raise the public’s awareness of the Health Service. Because with only 7million people ‘languishing’ (always with the languishing) on waiting lists, I guess there isn’t enough demand for its services.

Each year the state grows more and more, and our government achieves less and less.

Yet any tentative suggestion that it might be wise to you know, perhaps, maybe, possibly, trim a teeny tiny little bit off the size of our gargantuan state is met with shrill accusations that we’re demanding a new age of Austerity. Wishing nurses to starve, children to atrophy, schools to collapse and nanas to wither and die.

No. We don’t want that. We just think that maybe bus drivers from Bolton shouldn’t be funding quite so many Ugandan dance troupes. And wonder if we should really be spending £24,000 from a Middlesbrough midwife’s tax bill on a five foot wall made out of white Lego bricks.

What’s the end point? The sad truth is the government will probably continue to hoover up more and more of our national resources, our wages and personal wealth, until we eventually tip from a market economy, with socialist elements, to a socialist economy attached to some shops, we’re no longer allowed to drive to.

Just as I write this I note that Jeremy Hunt, our dead eyed Chancellor of the Exchequer, has had the temerity to take to the papers to warn that Britain is talking itself into economic decline. No Jeremy. We didn’t talk ourselves into anything.

It was you, and your failure of a political party, egged on by Keir Starmer and the entire sneering, people hating Malthusian left, in thrall to the permanent agents of our ever expanding, bloated, useless state, which together have governed us, overspent us, and taxed us, into economic ruin.

The economic devastation we see around us is a consequence of the choices you made, of your actions. Not ours. Don’t blame us for bankrupting our nation. You did this.

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And if you’re wondering why I’m sourcing my stories about government waste from The Sun. It’s because they’re often the only ones reporting on it. The rest of the media doesn’t seem to care.