#LevellingUp, #Tories? By cutting #taxes for the rich and heaping them on the poor?
Michael Gove: this Tory has been part of the government for 10 of the last 11 years and says levelling-up is needed because poor communities have been undervalued for years. Wasn’t that his doing? He’s not providing enough. And he’s busily giving tax breaks to bankers while punching working people down with the biggest tax burden in decades.
Michael Gove’s “levelling up” project is already an embarrassment to the Tories and the UK – and he’s only just provided any details?
The plan is to close the gap between rich and poor areas by 2030 through improving services such as education, broadband and transport.
The Tories say they’ll provide £11 billion for projects between now and 2030, including:
- £100m of new investment for innovation centres to boost research and development in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Glasgow
- A £1.5bn fund to give loans to small and medium-sized house builders for new homes mostly outside London and the South-East
- £5bn in bus services and active travel
- £1.8bn invested in new housing infrastructure, turning brownfield land into projects across the country
- £230m extra in grassroots football
- £30m allocated to improving parks and urban green spaces
- An extra £560m in activities for young people
- An additional £150m in a safer streets fund
Does that seem generous? Not when compared with other countries, as critics have pointed out:
• Germany have just committed £1.5 trillion to levelling up regional economies in Germany over 20 years.
• The UK has committed £11 billion to levelling up England for the next 5 years.
One is serious, the other is pretending.
— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) February 2, 2022
It doesn’t even compare with the amounts the Tories have wasted:
Lisa Nandy on levelling up: "They've given more to Covid fraudsters (£4.3bn) than they've given to the North of England"
— Rachel Wearmouth (@REWearmouth) February 2, 2022
But there is a solution!
The north of England should rename itself 'Serco'. Then the Tories would just give it £37bn.
— David__Osland (@David__Osland) February 2, 2022
Some have pointed out that Gove has been a poor choice to front this project:
Michael Gove, who’s been in Government for 10 out of the last 11 years, says people in northern England have been “overlooked and undervalued for years”.
— Adam Schwarz (@AdamJSchwarz) February 2, 2022
But the biggest flaw in the Tory plan for “levelling up” is that party’s own ongoing project to overbalance the nation’s wealth in favour of people who are already super-rich.
On the same day as Gove announced this project, the Tory government pushed through a plan to cut taxes for rich bankers – by £1 billion per year. This is at the same time as they are inflicting a 10 per cent increase in National Insurance on working people, after cutting Universal Credit for the same workers by more than £1,000 per year.
Conservative MPs tonight voted to hand bankers a tax cut worth £1,000,000,000 each year.
This is while they're pushing ahead with their National Insurance tax hike on workers.
Don't believe their lies on "levelling up". They're busy punching down.
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) February 2, 2022
Ultimately we come to the big question: why is there a disparity between “rich” and “poor” areas that needs “levelling up”?
One-word answer: Tories like Michael Gove.
Tories in power for over a decade. Over 80 of the last hundred years. As far as the need to level up, they are the problem not the solution.
— RedJohnSocialist (@RedJohnBounds) February 2, 2022
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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People will still vote tory no matter how much they take away from them and make them suffer….They are continually convinced to vote against their own best interest! Don’t these people realise that the tories and their wealthy tax evading cronies are extracting the urine out of them!
‘Levelling up’ is a meaningless term – invented by the fascist tories to fool us stupid peasants! Fascist tories’ latest ploy is to give their greedy fascist tory donors a huge tax break so that these boys can increase their bloated weath again!
Gove is lying as usual because he and his bros are responsible for ‘overlooking and ignoring north of england.’ 11 years of fascist tory rule and nothing changes – oops it has the greedy fascist tory donors have become even richer and we poor are poorer! That’s ‘levelling up’ – meaning exploit the poor and enrich the wealthy even more!