To claim we cannot afford more health and social care is an outright lie put forward by both the Tory and Labour leaderships, who are only interested in serving the wealthy

The Guardian reports this morning that:

Ministers must urgently inject £4bn into English town hall budgets to head off an “out of control” financial crisis that threatens to drag well-run councils into bankruptcy and put local services at risk, a cross-party group of MPs has warned.

The levelling up, housing and communities committee said government must act now to help councils stricken by shrinking resources and the costs of rising demand for adult social care, child protection, homelessness and special educational needs provision.

I have little doubt that the MPs in question are right. But that will not change Tory policy. And since Labour has accepted Tory sending limits, a general election will change nothing either. Very clearly, the leadership of neither party cares about vulnerable people.

Coincidentally, I noticed this data on the NHS budget from the King’s Fund, which is an NHS think-tank:

To survive and meet the demand from demographic change as well as fund the increased possibilities that technology provides, the NHS needs real increases in budget of around four per cent a year. It is going to get none in a time of inflation, meaning that real cuts are planned.

These MHS cuts are what are funding Tory tax cuts.

Labour has accepted these tax cuts because they are saying they will live within Tory plans and will not raise taxes.

In other words, there is the clearest evidence, yet again, that a general election will not change anything because the leadership of neither party cares about vulnerable people, as sick people always are.

None of this is necessary, of course. The whole point of writing the Taxing Wealth Report 2024 has been to show that massive sums are available in additional taxes that can be structured to fall almost entirely on the wealthiest, whilst up to £100 billion more can be found for investment by restructuring tax incentivised savings.

We do not need to impose misery on the UK.

We do not need to destroy local democracy.

We do not need to give in to climate change.

There is more than £8,000,000,000,000 of financial wealth in the UK (that’s £8 trillion, or £8 million million). To pretend there is no money left is not just absurd; in fact, it is an outright lie.

It is a lie used to support the fact that our leading politicians of both major parties just do not care.

I really do not know for how long the country will put up with this.

Hat tip to Roy Lilley for the link to the NHS data.