“We don’t need Austerity 2.0. We need a Britain 2.0. We can have a bright future ahead of us, but the only way we’ll get there is if we start taxing wealth, and start rebuilding this country together.”
NHS Campaigner Dr Andrew Meyerson recently addressed the national anti-austerity demonstration in London. You can read a published version of his speech calling for a wealth tax below:
Let’s do a maths problem together! If former PM Rishi Sunak has £650 million pounds, and we apply a 2% wealth tax to that amount, how much would our wealthy ex-PM have to pay?
Well let’s work it out! So if 1% of 650 million is 6.5 million, let’s double it, and we get £13 million! That’s how much Mr Sunak would have to pay. And how much would he have left after this 2% wealth tax? £650 Million -13 Million = £637 million. Poor Rishi Sunak! – He’ll only have £637 million left.”
Taxing wealth is not radical, it’s not insane, it’s not going to put Rishi Sunak or other wealthy folks in the poor house, it’s just common sense. Austerity 1.0 killed over 1 million people. The Tories used Austerity to destroy our public services, our cities, our communities and what’s insane is allowing it to ever happen again.
Allowing 20% of the population to suffer in poverty because Labour is too weak to ask the super rich to pay just a bit more, that’s insane.
Allowing our hospitals to crumble, our schools to crumble, allowing our kids to go hungry, allowing pensioners to freeze to death in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, that’s insane. That’s immoral. That’s a failure of government to protect our elders and we must not stand for it any longer.
And I’ll tell you another thing that’s insane: Watching 20,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses leave the NHS every single year because the Tories, and now Labour, refuses to restore our pay, a decision which deprives patients of safe staffing levels, prolonging this NHS recovery, that too is just insane.
Taxing wealth isn’t mad, it’s straight up common sense. And when they say “oh but the rich will leave!” tell them to look up what happened in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. No one moved after a wealth tax was instituted. Why? Because even if I don’t like the guy, wealthy folks like former PM Rishi Sunak grew up here, this is his country, and he has family, friends, and business here, and it’ll take a lot more than a 2% tax to make him pack up and go.
So Labour, end the insanity. We don’t need Austerity 2.0. We need a Britain 2.0. We can have a bright future ahead of us, but the only way we’ll get there is if we start taxing wealth, and start rebuilding this country together.
- This article is an edited version of the speech given by Dr Andrew Meyerson at the People’s Assembly Against Austerity National Demonstration on 7 June. You can follow Andrew on Twitter/X.
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