Matthew Elliott, co-founder and chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, answers your questions:
TaxCutter: Do you think the Taxpayers' Alliance would have become the, thankfully, successful group it has, had the Conservatives in recent years countered the government with a more traditional tax cutting policy? What do you think is the most effective way on an issue such as tax of changing or forming public opinion?
With the exception of the United States (where I’m replying to these questions from the National Taxpayers’ Union conference), taxpayer groups only generally succeed where there isn’t a major party committed to lower taxes. There wasn’t a pressing need for a TaxPayers’ Alliance when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister – Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson did a great job cutting taxes – but as soon as taxes began to rise under John Major the political space emerged for a UK taxpayer group. Now the TaxPayers’ Alliance has emerged, I hope that it has a role to play regardless of the future positions taken by the political parties, because taxpayers desperately need a group to represent them in the corridors of power and to provide some counterbalance to the countless groups arguing for more spending and therefore higher taxes.
Regarding public opinion, you are absolutely right that this is the key. If I go to a politician with a 100 page pamphlet setting out the case for lower taxes, the chances are that their eyes will glaze over and they’ll put it in the round file once I’ve left the room. However, if I give them an opinion poll demonstrating that people in their part of the country want lower taxes and show them a leaflet that our activists are delivering in their constituency calling for lower taxes, there’s a chance they’ll take an interest. This is why our focus is on changing public opinion and the way that we’re doing this is to demonstrate that their money is being wasted, to show that there is room for tax cuts and to show how lower taxes help families and create jobs.
Umbrella Man: You started TPA only a few years ago and it's grown very fast. What advice would you give to someone starting something similar?
The key reason for the TPA’s success, Umbrella Man, is that we represent a group in society – taxpayers – who are incredibly important but who have never had a unified voice in the media. When I worked at the European Foundation, I saw how Business for Sterling managed to dominate the European debate within a short period of time by running a competent media campaign and by building a credible coalition of support for their position, representing every group from businessmen to trades unionists to environmentalists. My advice to new groups would be to establish yourself as a single-issue campaign group. I think the age where the media automatically reported every new publication from a multi-issue think-tank, just because it represented the view of an expert sitting in SW1, has gone. The cost of political action has massively fallen, allowing organisations to emerge that represent disparate groups of people. If you can credibly claim to represent a certain group or point of view in society, you will be successful because you will get media coverage.
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