OMG this election is a yawn!

The weary drone of Rishi Sunak’s rain soaked prophecy “now is the moment for Britain to choose its future” is in the dim and distant. At the time the Tories were 21% behind Labour in the polls, since then , nothing much has happened and Labour lead the Tories by 21%.

In elections gone by, I’ve wanted to get out and deliver leaflets, attend meetings and get stuck in. Right now, I’m down to reading the Liberal’s pension policy statements and sending in blogs to London for Labour in the hope that we might get some of the vigour of the Mansion House debate, into the discussion.

The FT seems to agree with me

For those who care about the state of Britain, this excess of fiscal responsibility is unhelpful. The greater worry is that it will prevent the next government from delivering the transformations the country needs.

Labour want to simplify tax but we know that simplification creates winners and losers. The losers get the immediate airplay and the winners don’t realise they’ve won.

Pension taxation is a case in point. Rachel Reeves has made it clear that she wants to move to a flat rate of income tax relief but doing so creates a huge opportunity for arbitrage as high earners are moved to salary sacrifice. She says she wants to reintroduce the Lifetime Allowance, but the bird has flown, most of those who would have been impacted have had their financial advisers immunise them against change. Forestalling has happened.

The fear of negative press rules out meaningful change. For the Conservatives it was press generated by the back-benchers, for the Labour party it will be the outright hostility of a media only too keen to “tell us so”.

So long as Rachel Reeves promises us “no new taxes”, she hamstrings her capacity to change the rules and generate growth. For in that statement is contained the promise of “no tax changes”.

Of course there need to be changes in the way we distribute wealth. Right now we incentivise the rich to get richer and worry that we can’t afford to provide a safety net that gives basic benefits and a state pension fit to live on.

The blindingly obvious problem with the pension system is that it is hopelessly biased towards the wealthy and has lost sight of its fundamental purpose – to pay an income for life.

As for the failure of either Labour or Conservative party to even talk about the problem of long term care, it is quite shocking.

We have televised debates coming up. These should allow the agenda to be shifted back to the electorate who will have a chance to discuss the issues that they want talked about.

This cannot happen soon enough. For now, the debate we are watching is as sterile as it is puerile.

The policy debate is currently rather limited