Robert Paston

Very strategically placed behind your noggin.

You've made a career out of trying to help governments understand essentially numbers.

And one of the things, though, that I would ask you was a sort of philosophical question.

is, you know, politics is often driven by political parties coming up with some wheeze, like a wealth tax.

For example, the Greens, for example, create the impression that a wealth tax is going to solve everything.

But even if they could raise the sort of money that they think they can raise, which is, I think, sort of 15, 20 billion, as you point out, it is a drop in the ocean

of actually the tax needs of the economy.

How do we educate voters, as it were, to distinguish between what you might, you know, call, you know, even if these are real taxes that might possibly be levied, but taxes that in the end might make us feel better because they play to some sense of the fairness of the system.

We, you know, we...

Just had Gabriel Zucman actually on the podcast.

And he, you know, I think a lot of his appeal is, you know, he plays into a view, which I completely agree with, which is that billionaires do not pay enough tax, right?

But his version, his current version of a billionaire tax would be useful extra money, but it doesn't fill the big hole in the government's deficit year after year.

It just feels part of it.

How do we get to a situation where voters, in a sense, genuinely understand, you know, what is a sort of credible and effective reform from sort of window dressing?

But there's also a sort of paradox, though, in what you've just been saying.

So yes, it is true that Osborne and Cameron said some things which were quite difficult for many people to hear.

We had that era of austerity.

And my argument would be, however, even if in the context of the financial crisis, it was perfectly clear that we had to do some belt tightening, my own view would be some of the things they cut, like investment, actually undermined the very growth

that we desperately need if we're going to have a sustainable economy.

No, and so that is important.