I seriously wonder how long Labour has got before it has no choice but to wake up and smell the coffee.

It would be incredibly easy for Starmer, Reeves and Streeting to be sitting very smugly at present thinking that the election is sewn up and that their future in government is assured. On the basis of that they could and should be planning a whole string of King’s Speeches in which they might deliver their grand vision for the UK.

My problem with this suggestion should be obvious. Whilst the first observation is clearly true in the sense that the probability that they will win the election is very high, the second assumes that they have a plan for when they are in office, and nothing does at present suggest to me that anything of that sort exists.

It is, of course, possible that the Labour leadership team has created a ship so tight that nothing has leaked from it and they are playing a deliberate game of not disclosing their plans. It would be foolish to ignore this possibility. They do, rightly, know that much of the media is still not on their side.

However, I do not think that the team is anything like that watertight, let alone clever. Instead, like dazed rabbits that can hardly believe their luck on realising that they might suffer their fourth loss in a row, they are still so obsessed with winning the election that almost no one, I suspect, within the party has given much (if any) thought to what might happen next.

If there is a plan for government (and by now they should have one), I would be surprised. After all, we know that they might have only agreed on a manifesto very recently.

Likewise, if almost anyone within the shadow team beyond those very close to Starmer, has any real clue as to what might be expected of them on the day that they walk into their new department, I will be astonished. Nor do I expect anything much to change between now and then.

I do, in fact, have good reason for thinking that. The only minister who appears very close to Starmer who might have responsibility for a major spending department is Wes Streeting, and what he has to say about the NHS is deeply depressing. His instruction is that we must accept the status quo, increase the scale of private sector involvement in the supply of health services, anticipate real-term cuts in funding, and face down the inevitable employment disputes that will arise as a consequence. Given that he is in a better position than anyone else to negotiate a sensible settlement with Starmer and Reeves, then heaven help everybody else. It looks like that for all new ministers their primary focus will be on who it is that they can sack from day one onwards.

Accepting that I could be entirely wrong, the question to then ask is what will the public’s reaction to this be?

It is, of course, possible that in the short term they really will not care. Given how utterly disastrous the Tories have now proved themselves to be, anything might seem like a relief in comparison.

But, this is very unlikely to last for very long. The UK public are extremely fickle when it comes to their support for politicians, and I already suspect that Labour’s internal polling will be showing them that much of their support is decidedly soft.

As many commentators here suggest, it is likely that many of those who would traditionally support Labour feel decidedly uncomfortable about doing so now. Instead, much of their support probably now comes from those who would normally have voted Conservative, but who appreciate just how extreme and incompetent those who lead that party now are. That does not suggest that those people have really changed their political persuasion or that they think that Labour really is taking the place of the Tory party that they once supported. They are simply voting in despair, just as those who traditionally supported Labour despair about who to vote for.

This combination could prove quite disastrous for Labour. If it becomes apparent within months of being in office that they really do not have a plan for government, let alone a plan for how to fund the improvement in government services that people in this country are desperate for, the number of people who will have a sense of regret about voting for them will be significant.

Labour could, of course, be planning for this and expect to play a long game, hoping that over the following years, events will turn in their favour, giving them the opportunity for re-election. I do, however, think that to do so would be naive. There are two reasons for doing so.

The first is that as anyone with any sense knows, the Tories and other far-right political parties will be working in close strategic alliance, supported by the well-funded Tufton Street think tanks, from the moment that the election is lost. They will be promoting an agenda of hate from then on, knowing that there will always be a certain part of the population that will support this, which part will be boosted in size if Labour appears incompetent once in office.

The other reason for doubting that Labour will necessarily survive the appearance of incompetence that they might create within months of being in office is the deeply embedded belief that appears implicit in Rachael Reeves' thinking at present. Everything that she does and says implies that she is of the opinion that the structure of the society in which we live is stable and without need to change. In fact, most of the few proposals that she has made are about reinforcing those structures. This is naive in the extreme. The reality is that our society is unprepared for the problems that it is now facing, and someone with Reeves' attitude is wholly unsuited to partake in the process of adaptation that is now necessary.

Every one of our major public services is failing. It is apparent that a little tinkering at the edges will not solve the problems inherent within them.

As is also now very obviously true that climate change is going to have a dramatic impact much sooner than most people ever expected. After the wettest, but warmest, history in the UK in 200 years we will face a food crisis this summer. A new dependency upon imports will put pressure on exchange rates, and prices, but there is no hint within her thinking of how we will address that issue.

Worse, she has already abandoned her commitment to a Green New Deal.

On top of that, her very obvious lack of willingness to believe in the power of government to effect change, because she is already outsourcing decision-making to as many establishment-populated quangos as she possibly can, makes clear that she does not even think the government should be seeking to tackle the changes that are so obviously required. Presumably, she believes that the market will address them.

My guess is that Starmer shares her views. He shows no apparent capacity for independent thinking.

It is only a question of when all this will become apparent after Labour gets into office. My suspicion is that it will only take months for this to happen. At that point, when possessed of a big majority, Labour will have three choices.

They could try to weather out the storm, which would be disastrous for us all. Action is required.

Alternatively, they could realise that they have no choice but change, and look for what other plans are on the table that they might adopt. This is when I hope that the thinking in the Taxing Wealth Report might be of benefit.

Otherwise, they might resort to the ruse that they are already using with regard to social care, and say that nothing can be changed on issues of this scale without cross-party support, on the basis of which they will try to blame everyone else for their failings even though it would be naive on their part to believe that anyone will think that claim to be credible.

In summary, Labour is likely to offer us turmoil whatever the outcome of the general election precisely because they appear to have no plans in place for what they might do if, as is overwhelmingly likely, they win it. That’s not encouraging. Worse than that, rarely might there have ever been a greater opportunity lost, because that looks to be the prospect right now.

The Guardian is it the only outlet to have an article by me on the Taxing Wealth Report over the last day or so. So too has Prospect magazine.

I think we can be sure that the message will have been heard by now.

I posted this on TikTok this morning. The video discusses Rachel Reeves’ claim that she is bound by fiscal rules that she has made up.

@richardjmurphy

Fiscal Rules

♬ original sound - Richard Murphy - Richard Murphy

This afternoon I discussed another false claim by Reeves. This time it is the claim that we cannot afford to nationalise water because ‘taxpayer money’ is not available to pay for it:

@richardjmurphy

Nationalising Water Labour says it cannot nationalise failing water companies because it will cost far too much ‘taxpayer’s money’. They clearly do not understand the lessons from their own history. In 1947 not a penny was paid for the railways, mines and steel industry they nationalised. They paid with government bonds and no cash changed hands. They could do that again now. #thameswater #labourparty #uk

♬ original sound - Richard Murphy - Richard Murphy

Rachel Reeves has appointed Sir Edward Troup to be one of her four new tax advisers. He might be a former boss of HM Revenue & Customs, but he is a very odd choice.

First, as his Wikipedia page makes clear, he was a special adviser to Ken Clarke when he was Chancellor from 1995 to 1997. So he was, I think we can safely assume, a Tory set on opposing Labour at the time. I know people do change their spots, but I don't think this is a good start.

Then there is the problem of an article he wrote in 1999 for the FT in which he said:

Tax law does not codify some Platonic set of tax-raising principles. Taxation is legalised extortion and is valid only to the extent of the law.

I know of no one in tax justice or outside the Tufton Street think tanks who would share this view. The power to tax is part of what defines the state. Its power to use tax to organise society is one of the bedrock of left-of-centre thinking.  Troup clearly did not share those views on the state or society. It is an exceptionally odd view for someone advising a Labour Shadow  Chancellor to have held.

He added:

Tax avoidance is not paying less tax than you ‘should'. Tax avoidance is paying less tax than Parliament would have wanted. Avoidance is where Parliament got it wrong, or didn't foresee all possible combinations of circumstance.

The problem of tax avoidance is reduced to the problem of finding an answer to the question of what parliament intended and making sure that this is complied with. I would not pretend this is a simple task. But recognising this as the issue and dealing with it equitably and constitutionally would be a significant step on the way to tackling avoidance effectively.

Again, I would suggest that no reasonable person thinks now, or thought in 1999 that tax avoidance was the fault of Parliament. Tax avoidance is undertaken by those who wilfully seek to undermine the intent of parliament, aided and abetted by tax advisers (which Troup then was) willing to help them do so, in exchange for a fee.

I was not the only person with this concern back then. I raised my concerns in 2013 in anticipation of a Public Accounts Committee hearing in parliament. As a result, Margaret Hodge, who had read my post that morning (I sent it to her, together with another one), questioned Troup on these suggestions he had made. The record is still available. This exchange took place:

Q399 Chair: Well, the OECD does think that. Is it true that you said at some time that "Taxation is legalised extortion"?

Edward Troup: I am very glad that Mr Murphy and others go back and read the articles I wrote in the FT in the 1990s.

Q400 Chair: Did you say that?

Edward Troup: I wrote a whole series of articles.

Q401 Chair: People go back the whole time to stuff I did in the 1990s and 1980s, I can tell you. You never get away from your past.

Edward Troup: The article was making the point-indeed, it is relevant to a lot of what we discussed today about tax being a matter of law-

Q402 Chair: Did you say "Taxation is legalised extortion"?

Edward Troup: In the context of that article, which you read, I was making the point that it should not be left to the discretion of tax administrators to decide how much was due; it had to be left to the rule of law, and that is quite an important principle.

Q403 Chair: Did you say "Taxation is legalised extortion"?

Edward Troup: In the context of that article, those words appeared. If you read on-

Chair: You said it-thank you.

Edward Troup: Would you like me to read it?

Chair: No. I was interested; I would never dream of putting those four words together.

Hodge is now a colleague of Troup's on Reeves' new panel.

This, though, was not the only time Troup was called to account before parliament when he expressed contentious views. In 2004, he said when questioned by the Treasury Select Committee that:

I would not like to support anything which is perceived as tax avoidance, but you have got to remember that this is money left in the economy and this is not necessarily a bad thing for the economy. It may give a bit of an imbalance of incidence of tax between certain groups of people, but all we are actually saying is that some small, self-employed owned and managed businesses are actually paying less tax than the Government might have intended, which is not necessarily a bad thing, except to the extent that it creates inequity between equivalent classes of individuals.

In other words, he was indifferent to tax abuse by small businesses, did not care about inequality, the impact of tax abuse on honest smaller businesses, or the undermining of the rule of law that this activity represented.

So, the question is, if he thinks the tax is extortion and is apparently indifferent to the abuse of tax law, why is he a suitable person to advise Rachel Reeves? Could it be that, as quoted in a Guardian article in 2016:

“If you think the world needs to be changed you don’t appoint Edward Troup to that job,” said Jolyon Maugham QC, an expert in taxation law.

I agree with Jolyon.

In that same article, Margaret Hodge said, referring to the matters I note above:

The fact that he had written that draws into question whether or not he should be in charge of our tax system.

Hodge's question still remains relevant, not least with regard to his appointment to advise Rachel Reeves. Troup looks like a most unwise choice by Reeves.