The Taxpayers’ Alliance
I missed yesterday’s announcement that former Telegraph and ConHome writer, Jonathan Isaby had been appointed Political Director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
The Conservative party and the Taxpayers’ Alliance have always had a very close relationship. The appointment of Isaby as Political Director, apparently responsible for ‘building links with Ministers, MPs and MEPs’, means the partnership will become cosier still.
This appointment brings to mind an occasion in 2006 when I visited Conservative Central Office at its former residence in Victoria Street. During the meeting, our group were informed by Mark Clarke, who was then the pompous Chairman of Conservative Future, and Ian Oakley, at the time a Conservative candidate in Watford, that the newly formed Taxpayers’ Alliance were simply a front organisation set up by the Tories to attack Labour on tax.
The ‘brilliant idea’, so we were told, was to create a separate organisation that could attack Blair and Brown on economic issues, meaning the Labour party, BBC and print media couldn’t just dismiss the complaints as being irrelevant because they had come from the Conservatives.
I even recall mention of how the organisation was to be funded by existing donors to the Tory party and indirectly, the Conservative party itself. At the time I wrote a blog entry on my website making note of a few of these remarks on the TPA, and criticised Mark Clarke and Ian Oakley for being slimy and insincere. Not long afterwards Clarke contacted me by email to ask that I withdraw the article, not, so he said, due to the personal criticism, but for revealing matters about the workings of the TPA at a private meeting in CCHQ. Naturally I refused, and that was the end of the matter as far as I saw it. Furthermore, in subsequent years my observations on the disgraceful Ian Oakley were rather vindicated by events.
Thus, from its inception, the Taxpayers’ Alliance existed as a Conservative sanctioned group used to indirectly assault the Labour administration over their economic incompetence, high tax policies and runaway spending habits. Of course, now that Labour are no longer in office and the Tories (and Lib Dims) have replaced them, the situation has somewhat changed.
In 2006 we had TPA reports on ‘The Real Cost of Gordon Brown’ and ‘Moving Britain Backwards’ – the latter claimed to ‘tear apart Gordon Brown’s economic record and shows how Britain’s economy has become less competitive and less able to meet the coming challenges’. Likewise, in 2008 we had ‘Gordon Brown’s Economic Failure’ and ‘Brown’s Borrowing Will Be Double The Debt Needed To Win World War One’, which, in Daily Mail-esque language, had William Norton stating:
British taxpayers enter this downturn like lions led by donkeys. Not only will full recovery take twice as long as the First World War lasted, but we are going to take on twice as much debt. Alistair Darling is sending the taxpayer over the top to face a financial Battle of the Somme.
However, since the general election the Taxpayers’ Alliance has been rather muted in their criticism of the Coalition – unsurprising given their origins. Under George Osborne the ‘official’ national debt has increased from £700bn to what Christopher Booker mockingly called ‘a much more manageable £900bn’. Where therefore are the regular TPA proclamations denouncing excessive Government debt as there were under Gordon Brown?
Likewise, where are the TPA talking heads on the BBC and Sky condemning the Prime Minister for increasing taxes and hiking governmental spending? It has all gone eerily quiet – particularly when you consider that the Coalition has increased taxes, increased the national debt and given away even more money to the IMF and EU than before.
Should the TPA ever overstep the mark and lose its special Tory stamp of approval, then it is unlikely the organisation could support itself for too long. At the moment it is a rather wealthy group, taking in over a million pounds in donations and managing to employ quite a few highly paid staff. It dare not bite the Tory hand which feeds it lest those generously charitable gifts dry up.
Similarly, the Conservative party to some small extent needs the Taxpayers’ Alliance. As one of its ‘approved’ partners, party donors and supporters may be encouraged to give money, resources and time to it, with Dave and company safe in the knowledge that it will be funnelled up a blind alley rather than spent on anything that may meaningfully change Britain.
This is not to say that the TPA is entirely useless in absolutely ever report it writes or campaign it runs. As Helen Szamuely remarked:
In the past my comments about the Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) have been mixed. Sometimes they do good work, sometimes it is a bit shoddy and their habit of not crediting anyone with previous research is annoying.
But, the point is that they are far too close to the Conservatives to be of any real, long-term worth – and the appointment of the likes Jonathan Isaby, who is seen as a ‘safe pair of hands’ by the Tories, confirms just that.
