Above, a portrait of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, by Philippe de Champaigne (1655).
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Finance Minister to Louis XIV, once famously declared “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose, as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers, with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”
Colbert’s wisdom applies today just as much as it did in the 17th Century.
It is now widely assumed that the next Prime Minister will be Sir Keir Starmer.
Labour will want to raise as much money as possible in new taxes. There is much talk of clamping down on tax avoidance. Also of trying to close down IHT avoidance in “tax havens”.
Armed with a supermajority [390 to 433 members] Labour might be tempted to take a leaf out of Harold Wilson’s playbook from 1966. In 1966, Wilson restricted the possession of gold. The legislation extended this to cover the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as well as the UK. This produced a storm of protest – in the tax havens.
Labour might take control of the UK’s tax havens by doing what the French did with some of their small overseas territories: Make them part of France.
Were the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands plus the other overseas territories made “Exclaves of the United Kingdom” bestowing the same status on their citizens as UK citizens – meaning that a series of by-elections would be held for mew members of the Commons – the effects would be dramatic.
It would raise storms of protest in these territories and elsewhere but most UK voters would be unaffected and thus unruffled.
Of course, IF Sir Keir Starmer is planning to do this he will keep it a secret.