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Hi ,

This year's party conference season, finishing next week with Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, has seen all our political parties grapple with the crises we're trapped in. The question of what kind of country we want to be, what kind of world we want to live in – and what could very well happen instead if we're not careful –has felt very prominent this year.

Reform's potential for enormous growth over the next few years and a growing far right across Europe made Reform's stated goal of a Farage government feel worryingly plausible. The Green Party's four new MPs offered an alternative path for society, while the Lib Dems cheered their mass return to parliament and planned to win the battle of ideas around health and social care.

At Labour conference, meanwhile, we've been chasing politicians around Liverpool in the pouring rain with groups like GNDR, Oxfam, Greenpeace, and trade unions to demand they face the crises we're in and tax the rich to invest in the rest of us. Yesterday, we rallied outside the conference to make our demands clear:

The incredible work put in by activists for the unions, the Green New Deal, and charities has made questions about extreme wealth, inequality, and real investment in our futures inescapable at this conference. Certainly, I know several MPs that are sick of seeing me walk towards them with leaflets and a question. Others, like Nadia Whittome and Dawn Butler, have joined the campaign. Maybe we're over-optimistic, but it really does seem like this has moved the dial a little. The stories of life in unequal societies, the research into billionaires profiting off crisis, and the popular pressure you've helped us create are registering in the heads of MPs. The vision we're building together of a more equal society can be realised.

That's why it's important we keep up the pressure ahead of the October budget: tax the rich, invest in the rest us. MPs can keep sidestepping me at conference, but they can't avoid us all speaking together. We need you to amplify these demands as much as you can: signing and sharing our new petition, writing to your MPs and local papers, joining unions, speaking about wealth taxes and more!
 
Sign the petition
UN adopts 'Pact for Future' calls to tax rich, tackle climate, move beyond GDP

At the UN summit in New York, the world voted to adopt the Pact for Future, a document that secretary-general António Guterres said was about 'turbocharging' the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

As well as much-needed committment to limiting global heating, eradicate poverty, and protect fundamental human rights, the Pact included plans to work for a global tax on the super-rich. Also interesting was a goal to move beyond GDP as a measure of sustainable development, shifting the focus from profits to people and planet.
Read about the Pact

How else could we campaign for taxes on the rich before the budget? You said:

  • "Publicise the skewed distribution of wealth. Emphasise its unearned nature."

  • "Explain to the public-in simple terms- how the wealthy use legal and illegal means to protect their wealth.I don't fully understand it myself!"

  • "One way would be to refresh what Nye Bevan put on the NHS launch leaflet that went to every household, about our NHS not being a charity, but paid for our of taxes in order to relieve money worries in times of sickness.
    In other words, let's have a national kitty to provide all the things the market cannot: public parks, libraries, schools, hospitals, museums, galleries, social care, special needs education etc etc etc. Make public services universal, not by post-code or lottery funding etc."

  • "Have a look at Richard Murphy's Wealth Tax Report and campaign for his suggestions. Educate us all in economics (Modern Monetary Theory)."

  • "Hammer home the point that compared to normal people the rich pay very little tax proportionally. Tax loopholes, offshore accounts etc. need to be highlighted continuously. Also the lobbying that is shrouded in mystery needs to be fully exposed, as do the shady deals done behind closed doors. We need the government to be much more transparent in their workings and more forthright in their ambition. Lazy, fiddling around the edges of problems will not solve anything."
Inequality in Numbers

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In The News
Oxfam: 'Unfairways' campaign to tax private jets

A new campaign from Oxfam is demanding taxes on luxury polluters like private jets and superyachts, one of the most unequal sources of pollution. In the UK, they estimate £2bn a year could be raised by taxing the ultra-rich's ultra-polluting transport, and they're calling on both the Scottish government and UK government to act now. Key stat: it would take the average UK citizen almost 11 years to emit as much carbon as a single private jet emits in a round trip from London to New York.
Read more
Equality downgrade in the European Commission?

President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen is assembling her new EU administration after her re-election last March, but over 50 groups have raised concerns that she's removed the post of equality commissioner from the line up. The role had been tasked with overseeing anti-racism strategies, anti-poverty work, and gender inclusion, but will now be merged with a crisis management role. With a surging far right putting many Europeans at risk, equality should be more important than ever.
Read more

The Equality Trust
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info@equalitytrust.org.uk