Two-thirds in favour of bank windfall tax

A new ComRes poll for the Independent shows overwhelming public support for a windfall tax on the banks. As the chart below shows 66 per cent agreed that a “windfall tax should be imposed on the banks,” 25 per cent disagreed, and 9 per cent do not know.

Two-thirds support a windfall tax on the banks The Independent made no mention of the finding in their coverage focusing instead on public support for “David Cameron’s call for the size of the state to be slimmed down.”

The sole commentary on the web is provided by Liberal Conspiracy’s Chris Baynard who early this morning wrote:

“66% of all voters, including 68% of Conservatives and 76% of Labour supporters agreed that a Windfall Tax should be imposed on banks. Only 25% disagreed.”

Could it be that the Independent were reluctant to publish findings at odds with their columnists? Much to Left Foot Forward’s dismay, Bruce Anderson wrote yesterday: “Let’s have more rich bankers, not fewer.”

http://twitter.com/shamikdas/status/5204262387 Shamik Das

Two-thirds in favour of bank windfall tax: http://is.gd/4EtY7
Rory

‘Could it be that the Independent were reluctant to publish findings at odds with their columnists?’ I doubt it, since most of their columnists are on the Left. Stephen Glover is the only other one they have on the Right as far as I know.
http://twitter.com/othertpa/status/5205045015 Clifford Singer

RT @leftfootfwd: RT @shamikdas: Two-thirds in favour of bank windfall tax: http://is.gd/4EtY7
Alan W

Too right there should be a windfall tax. Hell, it’s all taxpayers’ money anyway. It beggars belief how the Government has simply stood by and watched as the banking class have carried out the wholesale looting of the public purse.

This certainly isn’t the first poll to show widespread popular support for reigning in the City. It begs the question as to who on earth Labour imagine they are going to win the support of with their pusilannimous attitude to bankers’ greed. Certainly not their core supporters, and by the look of things not the vast majority of mainstream opinion either. The bankers are going to vote Tory regardless, and besides, in case Labour have forgotten, at elections it’s the number of voters who support you that matters, not their combined bank balances.

The credit crunch should have been a gift for the Labour Party. Instead, much like the last time they found themselves in office at the outset of an economic crisis in 1929-31, the party leadership have been trapped by their devotion to right wing orthodoxies just at the point that those orthodoxies are exposed as utterly specious. For Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden it was the primacy of the balanced budget; for Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling it is the canard, brilliantly exposed yesterday in Stewart Lansley’s article, that whatever is good for the City is good for Britain. Whereas MacDonald and Snowden broke with their party and continued to rule in league with the Tories, it seems the current Government are content, as far as Big Finance goes, to continue acting as proxy Tories until we get the real thing back in office next May.