It was red briefcase day yesterday as the Chancellor Alistair Darling announced the UK budget. While the aid budget remained intact (yay!) the Chancellor ignored the calls that have been raining in loudly and in massive numbers to implement the Robin Hood Tax (boo).
By coming across all Sheriff of Nottingham he’s let down the 150,000 people in Britain who support a Robin Hood Tax and the millions of people here and abroad who could benefit from its implementation.
A real Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions would raise tens of billions of pounds for good causes but his proposed levy is both less ambitious and prone to delay
He did propose a global bank tax but this will raise a fraction of the amount that a real Robin Hood tax would achieve. Plus, there’s no guarantee at all that the money would be used to protect jobs, help poor people at home and abroad or fight the effects of climate change.
Poor people were banking on the Chancellor to play Robin Hood but instead he has chosen to let rich financial institutions off the hook.
The Chancellor missed an opportunity to show real global leadership. It is not true that this tax cannot be unilateral – we already have one unilateral tax on stocks and shares- we could easily have another one now on sterling which would get the ball rolling and start preventing job cuts and helping the poor.
I always think of Royal Bank of Scotland’s strap-line, more apt than they probably thought of at the time: You deserve a better bank. Unfortunately, we still don’t have one.