British government is a pariah.

The argument between the mainstream parties in the British Parliament about raising the social taxes of so called 'self employed' workers dominates the British media. In reality it is a minor sin in a staggering Tsunami of evil.

'The parliament from 2015-16 to 2020-21 is on course to be the worst on record (ed) for income growth in the bottom half of the working age income distribution. In contrast, incomes in the top half of ... household distribution are projected to grow by a modest 4 per cent, largely comprising unimpressive pay growth and a slight boost from income tax cuts. We project the biggest rise in inequality since the 1980s, with inequality after housing costs reaching record highs by 2020-21. Bottom-half incomes set to fall significantly. Median income set to stagnate.' Quotes from the Resolution Foundation Report. (A cross-party think-tank, February 2017.)

Together with the impact of the relentless decomposition of the 'social wage' (health, care, education, pensions, etc.,) the direct incomes of the British working class will not return to 2007 levels until 2025. And that particular prediction depends on Brexit not crashing, or a new slump not blowing through Europe, or if the million (14% of the workforce) who are now on zero hour contracts do not expand, or if productivity (read investment) does not continue to slump and so on. Nothing about 2025 can be guaranteed.  What is guaranteed is that if May's government is not brought down then British working class families, who, in the last decade have just experienced their worst pay in 70 years, (Financial Times 24 November 2016) will be pushed down further and faster - based on the government's own figures and projections.

The coming 5 years are also going to be the worst for the the British health system. The NHS faces 'the biggest sustained fall in NHS spending since 1951. See Patients4NHS. Both national Headteachers Associations are preparing for a significant reduction in mainstream school spending, the first direct cuts since the 2008 crash, while new subsidies are launched for a new wave of selective Grammar schools. Welfare spending, delivered by Local Authorities, is facing new cuts as inflation increases and LA's are already struggling with the 27% worth of cuts made since 2010.

And yet an argument over unfairness blooms - in defence of the rich! The British wealthy have found more and more defenders. For a long time the idea has circulated that if you poke the rich too much they pay less or move away. Now it is their beneficence that ex Chancellor Osborne and others have praised. Since the financial collapse in 2008 the amount of income tax paid by the richest 1 per cent has risen from 24.4 per cent to 27.5 per cent, meaning, croaks the British Daily Telegraph 'that 300,000 people pay more than a quarter of the nation's income tax'. How good of them to bother.

However:-

the poorest tenth of the population now have, between them, 1.3% of the country's total income (not wealth or riches) and the second poorest tenth have 4%.  In contrast, the richest tenth have 31% and the second richest tenth have 15% of the country's income. The income of the richest tenth is more than the income of all those on below-average incomes (i.e. the bottom five tenths) combined. It should be elementary, even for the worms who write for the rich in the Daily Telegraph, that the richest 20% in Britain should have been paying - not 24.4% or 27.5% - but rather 46% of income tax on the basis of the figures and the most elementary fairness and justice. (They can divide it equably between the top tenth and the second top tenth as they wish.) And income does not cover wealth.

The Office of National Statistics puts wealth in Britain this way;
'In July 2012 to June 2014 aggregate total household wealth (including private pension wealth) of all private households in Great Britain was £11.1 trillion.
The distribution of wealth is highly skewed towards the top - the wealth held by the richest 10% of households combined was just under £5 trillion and represented a 45% share of aggregate total wealth. Conversely the combined wealth of the bottom half of households in the distribution was less than £1.0 trillion; a value which accounted for just 9% of aggregate total wealth. The wealth of the least wealthy 10% of households accounted for less than half of 1% of aggregate total wealth.'

Besides the £10 trillion in wealth held by the top half of Britons (with the top 10% holding half of that) the ONS does not mention the British part of the £30+ trillion currently stashed away in Tax Havens.

Focus on the great campaigns launched to defend the NHS and to exclude Trump is the priority, but what should the opposition, inside and outside Parliament, say and do about this appalling May government?

During the Budget debate Labour leaders need to spell out that overcoming the imbalance of Britain's wealth means that income tax (among other measures) should be used - at least to return inequality to conditions of the 1960s and 1970s. They should thunder against a government that is determined to make the rich richer and working class people poorer and poorer. They should shout from the roof tops that this government is worse than Thatcher. That is has, uniquely in the West, supported Trump and international racism. That it is driving down the NHS and now state education. May's government is committed to a ruthless class war. And it has to be brought down.