Menzies Campbell - Beliefs

Beliefs

Campbell's political beliefs can be summarised as those of a moderate social liberal. Campbell has promoted radical policies to shift taxation away from goods such as employment and towards bads such as pollution through a revenue-neutral restructuring of the tax system that maintains the current tax burden whilst lifting two-million low-paid individuals out of income tax altogether.

Campbell's primary area of interest is acknowledged to be foreign policy: he strongly supports multilateral institutions such as the European Union and the United Nations but argues that the European Union must reform to become more democratic and the United Nations must develop new mechanisms for dealing with humanitarian crises. He has also been critical of the what he claims is “disproportionate military action” employed by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza and in Lebanon, contending that Israel’s tactics exacerbate existing tensions and lead to human rights abuses. Though a supporter of Anglo-American cooperation, Campbell has argued that the Bush-Blair relationship was one-sided and that the Labour government pursued it at the expense of Britain's standing in other international institutions, particularly the EU and UN.

Although never going so far as to advocate direct affirmative action policies (such as Labour’s all-woman shortlists), Campbell has stressed the need for the Liberal Democrats to provide extra support for female, disabled and ethnic minority candidates seeking to contest winnable seats.

In July 2007, Campbell unveiled his radical new tax proposals. These amount to a large shift in the tax burden (certified as revenue-neutral by the non-partisan Institute for Fiscal Studies) away from low-income and middle-income earners and onto higher-earners and pollution. This is to be implemented by cutting the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 16%, closing £13.5 bn of tax loopholes for high-earners and imposing larger green taxes on polluters. Campbell said of the proposals, "the unacceptable reality is that in Britain today the poorest pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the super-rich" and that his aim was for "the rich and people with environmentally damaging lifestyles pay a fairer share".

Campbell is currently a member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, established in October 2009.