THE amount withdrawn from equity funds last month was £1.6bn as the bosses panicked that PM Burnham will be forced to put up taxes. Investors have withdrawn an unprecedented £13.9bn from funds over the last year.
The City is now concerned that Labour could impose a wealth tax to help fund plans for spending on infrastructure when John Healey, the Chancellor, delivers his first budget on October 28th.
Edward Glyn, the head of global markets, commented : ‘Speculation that the Burnham-Healey government could further target wealth – including through higher capital gains tax, changes to pay allowances or even an exit tax – may be prompting investors to take precautionary action.
‘Investor confidence is being eroded by fear of the unknown… That uncertainty appears to be influencing investment decisions.’
In fact: ‘The outflow from investment funds echo the run-up to last year’s November budget. More than £6.6bn was withdrawn by UK investors as fears grew that taxes would be put up.’
The figures come a day after Dame Jane Fraser, the chief executive of City Group, issued a warning to Burnham against putting up taxes on banks.
Fraser said that a fresh tax rise risked making the UK a prohibitively expensive place to do business, pointing out that even Frankfurt and Paris are lower.
She said that when it comes to taxes on banks, London ‘is already one of the most expensive centres in the world’.
British capitalism is now in a desperate crisis and its government, a Labour government, is desperate to find a capitalist way out of this crisis, even if it means crashing the standard of living of the British working class.
It would even belittle the crashes of the 1920s and the privations of the hungry 1930s.
There is only one way out of the desperate crisis of the world capitalist system and that means the working class taking power and getting rid of it.
This means the TUC must be forced by the millions of its trade unionists to call an indefinite general strike which would bring down this pro-business Labour government.
The working class must then go forward to bring in a Workers Government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries and establish a planned socialist economy.
Capitalism has more than had its day, it must be dumped into the dustbin of history and replaced by a socialist society whose axiom will be ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their need’.
What is required to lead this decisive struggle is the building up of the Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists as the revolutionary leadership to lead the millions that are rising up.
There is not a moment to lose as the capitalist crisis becomes more and more desperate and the methods of the capitalists become more and more violent and brutal as they struggle desperately to hold onto power.
The working class of the world is more than capable of smashing capitalism and imperialism and going forward to socialism.
Now is the time to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International to lead this struggle in every country.
Now is the time to organise the victory of the world socialist revolution and to consign capitalism to its graveyard.
• Forward with the world socialist revolution!
