Yes I really, really feel there's a worrying elision going on here (and I've been doing a lot of reporting on dodgy high street shops!)

I really think the money laundering thing is enormously overplayed based on very little evidence and the tax evasion / lack of minimum wage underplayed.

Ditto last budget increased CGT while Labour have also broadened inheritance taxes

Not sneering at zero-rating. (Normal) crisps have VAT on them. Ideally you’d get rid of the exemptions (and maybe drop rate?) but keeping them would make raising the rate easier (which would bring in revenue to spend on lovely progressive causes rather than keeping Aston Martins cheap)

All wise reforms but not revenue raisers

Fair points

All good points in your piece. I’m just struck by how surprisingly rare your position is on left at large

Yah true, one of the few

isn't "For anyone who is interested in an extensive discussion of what “social democracy” means" your bio?

I say this a lot (and I happily admit that it's the old fashioned romantic in me and it isn't coming back, for good or ill) but the decline in the scope and size of a lot of working class cultural and social bodies. (the trades unions, Co-Ops, WMCs) has contributed to that left-wing atomisation.

No, strangely. Confess I didn't mention it

Good points. Originally I was going to write about billionaires in political discourse but got sidetracked by Reeves speech

The IPPR stuff is interesting because it does show how Tories boxed in Labour by going after top percentiles on income tax. Gordon Brown put in highest rate at equivalent of 230k in today’s money; Tories now levy it at £125k-ish (albeit at slightly lower rate)

Oh fair. Thought you meant I’d invented “left wing politician who says we should tax billionaires not workers” when it’s common! Just find concept of nick amusing because he’s just a grumpy Labour (and now maybe Green voter). All part of wider moral panic about young men.

Yeah so it’s a debate about whether it’s too high rather than worry about it increasing