Siobhan O’Donnell on a pledge that sounds wonderful until you realise punk rockers inherit only vinyl, debts and one particular settee
Saturday 10 October, 9.15am, kitchen, kettle on, window open because the boiler is broken again and the landlord’s idea of heating is advice.
Dear Diary. I woke up to the news that the Conservatives have promised to abolish inheritance tax on family homes. Our own newsroom got there first with its usual calm, and the piece in the feed is titled Conservatives Promise to Abolish Inheritance Tax on Family Homes, Government Horrified Britons Might Keep Something Their Parents Already Paid Taxes On, which is a headline so long it needs its own postcode. The summary describes Kemi Badenoch’s pledge to scrap inheritance tax on family homes and let couples pass on up to one million pounds in other assets tax-free. That is the comic summary of the pledge as it appears on our site, so I am telling you what the satire says, not auditing the policy.
My first reaction was the one every renter has: lovely, which house?
What I Will Inherit
Let me list my expected inheritance. A shoebox of badges. A turntable with a personality disorder. A box set of the Buzzcocks with a missing disc. A pot plant that has outlived three flatmates and two relationships. And a sofa with a stain that my family refers to only as the incident.
The tax authorities may be relieved to hear that none of this will trouble the threshold. If you want to see how a policy sounds to people who are not in the room, our piece on how the home asks whether it counts if the children already live in it is the funniest take I have read on the subject, and it is told from the point of view of the house, which is the only party in this debate that has not been consulted.
The Great Transfer
There is a serious point under the jokes, and Diary, you know I do not do serious points often, so let us enjoy this one. Our analysis of the generational wealth transfer and the inheritance economy nobody wants to talk about argues that Britain has quietly turned into a country where your housing prospects depend more on who died than on what you do. I am not an economist. I am a woman who once tried to budget by writing numbers on her arm. But even I can see that if the biggest asset in the family is a house, and the tax on passing it down goes, the people who benefit are the people who already have the house.
That is not a criticism of anyone’s parents, who worked hard and paid taxes and bought something when it cost the price of a decent sports car. It is an observation that punks of my generation were told to go and get jobs, and then discovered the jobs paid in exposure and sandwiches.
The Punk Position
For the record, the punk position on inheritance has always been that you leave people your records, not your property, because records can be shared. The first generation of London punks were not squatting for the aesthetic. They were squatting because the alternative was a rent that took the whole of the dole. The 1976 sound was, to some extent, the sound of people with nowhere to put their feet.
Today the squats are flats and the flats are investments, and the people who live in them pay a rent which would have embarrassed a Victorian landlord. If you want a royal example of how inheritance can go wrong, our report on Charles leaving Camilla and the royal inheritance shows what happens when the family silver turns out to be a family argument.
Questions I Would Ask the Politicians
If I got five minutes with any party leader, which I will not, because I am not on the list, I would ask the following.
First, who is this for? A policy is a kindness to someone, and I would like to know who.
Second, how is it paid for? Every pledge has a bill, and the bill usually ends up at the door of the person who rents.
Third, what about people who have no house to leave? I do not mean this as self-pity. I mean it as a genuine question about the shape of the country.
Fourth, can I have a word with the boiler? It is a serious matter, and the landlord is a family friend of nobody.
A Small Fairness Note
For balance, and because I am trying to be an adult this month, there is a respectable case for the pledge. Supporters argue that families who work and save should be able to pass on the home they bought with taxed income, and that inheritance tax catches people who never thought of themselves as rich. That is a fair argument, and the people who make it deserve to hear it argued back with facts, not with a Doc Marten. I will leave the facts to the people whose job it is. My job is to find the joke in the kitchen.
If you want more of the day’s absurdity, Newsthump is the place for a headline that makes the whole thing worse. And if you want the full guide to how we do this, the complete guide to political satire in the UK is a good place to start, and Bohiney Magazine has the American view, which has its own set of doomed pledges.
10.40pm. Tea, a biscuit that has gone soft and the radio on low. I have decided to put the sofa in my will. It is the only thing I own that will outlive the landlord.
Night, Diary. Check the boiler before you check the news.
SOURCE: bohiney.com