Dear readers, we have no secrets between us, so I will not hide from you that I missed the Sky leaders’ appearance last night, and instead read Evelyn Waugh’s letter, laughing my head off throughout it. I endorse them for this campaign. They are rude, disruptive and sincere, and the latter quality is not to be found in any of their manifestos.
But actually, one of the promises in the manifesto surprised me, and I was surprised to see it in the BBC headline yesterday. The SDP proposes transferable tax allowances for married couples with children. This means that if the spouse who stays at home to look after the children, the full amount of the allowance – just over £12,500 a year – could be transferred to the household breadwinner, so that the couple would only have to pay tax on the amount over £25,000. Pretty good, don’t you think?
This is a truly radical measure, at least in modern times. At a time when the two major political parties are competing over who can get mothers back to work as quickly as possible, and the Prime Minister is boasting about nursery schools for babies from nine months of age, here is a proposal that recognises and even encourages parents who take the view that either party might want to look after their own child.
Of course, you don’t have to do that — we’re not forcing you to do that — but we’re using the tax code to recognize that desire and to support marriage.
Compare that to Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt’s view, which would set the married couples’ allowance at £10,380, but with the tax credit for the allowance fixed at 10 per cent of that, the lucky spouse can expect to get a maximum allowance of £1,038 to deduct from their basic rate income tax. Spend wisely, everyone.
Encouraging marriage was once a recognized good that the state sought to support through taxation.
Long ago, when Nigel Lawson was Chancellor of the Exchequer, encouraging marriage was an avowed good that the state tried to support through the tax system. When the Conservative party knew where they stood – when they had a consistent set of values ​​– one of those values ​​was supporting marriage and family. And strangely enough, Labour would not have contested that. In 2000, under Sir Tony Blair’s government, the allowance for married couples was abolished, only to be reinstated in a modestly scaled-back form by David Cameron in 2015.
It is now up to a small, little-known party to bring back to prominence what was once clearly a good thing. Oh. You didn’t know the SDP was running? Who was it, really? Only those of a certain age remember that the SDP changed British politics when they broke away from the Labour Party with the Gang of Four. It is the surviving remnants of that party that are changing politics again with their combination of social conservatism and public ownership.
The chances of winning this election are slim. Even politically savvy people will have trouble recognising the party leader, William Clouston, amid all the identity flaunting. The best-known candidate is columnist Rod Liddle. But if the Conservatives are trying to salvage their cause after the coming catastrophe, they could start by stealing the SDP’s clothes from the clothesline. Indeed, if Sir Keir Starmer wants to reassure voters that Labour cares for traditional values ​​(Sir Tony was good at that), he could steal them too.
The underlying reason, of course, is that marriage is obviously better for the children that result from it than any other alternative, and if we care about children, we will want to encourage marriage.
Melanie McDonagh is a columnist for the Evening Standard.
