The lame duck and the rooster

A storm recently swept through the Labour Party, taking with it a 66-year-old MP who had spent over three decades on the backbenches, installing him as Labour Party leader. But the storm wasn't done yet.

Jeremy Corbyn gained the biggest mandate of any party leader since the establishment of Labour in 1900. Not bad for a grey haired eccentric from the periphery of modern politics.

Moving beyond all the party rhetoric about a kinder politic and a new order, there sits in opposition a potentially very powerful man.

'Informed opinion' suggests this is not a man who should be taken seriously but there is an undeniable truth that comes with the position he has assumed; Jeremy Corbyn does not have to win the next general election in order to influence policies that will affect private clients.

We need only look as far back as the influence of the opposition in the last election when former shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, and former leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband, began picking at the perceived inequalities of non-dom tax status, vowing to scrap it completely.

In response the Tories were forced into developing their own non-dom policies, unleashing the raft of changes and consultations we're currently seeing.

But it's not all bad news. Corbyn has asked Lord Bach to lead a review into legal aid following the effects of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO).

Whatever your position on government cuts, is giving the less affluent a means of pursing justice through state funding the worst use of public funds?

I certainly don't think so.

I would welcome any pressure that can be exerted on the government to reconsider its reforms and stop treating access to justice like a game of KerPlunk.

Meanwhile, Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnel have spoken briefly about a 'graded' approach to inheritance tax, tightening corporate tax avoidance and reforming capital gains tax, but details have been few on the ground.

Clearly, what has somewhat unimaginatively been dubbed 'Corbynomics' still has some way to go.

As the lame duck that is David Cameron sits pretty and navigates his second term in office, we wait with abated breath to hear what the new rooster on the farm shouts about next.

Binyamin Ali is editor of Private Client Adviser

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