Peter Rhodes on nukes, taxes and Keir Starmer's bold statement on reparations

Latest leak in Whitehall is the one to extract more inheritance tax from land owners, especially the aristocracy. It is whispered that this tax hike will apply only to huge farms, not to small businesses or traditional family farms. But for how long?

The lesson of history is that once any tax is introduced, it tends to grow and spread. So this year you pay the new tax only if you have a vast farm of 500 hectares or more. Next year, the qualifying size is 100 hectares. And the year after that, it's a window box.

I bet Keir Starmer takes a big step forward in the popularity stakes as a result of his bold declaration this week that Britain will not apologise for the slave trade, nor pay reparations.

A few British families grew fabulously rich on slavery and there may be a moral case, or even a legal claim, for them to make payments to individual slave descendants.

But the wholesale paying of money by people who have never been slave owners to people who have never been slaves is a step too far. It is also impossible for practical reasons. A century ago it might have been easy to identify “English money” and hand it to black families in the Caribbean. But how does a nation as diverse as modern Britain divert UK money into Caribbean hands when Britain's fastest-growing ethnic group is mixed-race and nearly 20 per cent of UK taxpayers are from ethnic minorities?

The Economist magazine warns that Iran, having failed to do much damage to Israel with high-explosive missiles, may “feel the need for stronger deterrence", and even “race for a nuclear bomb". Scary stuff. But building a nuke is one thing, finding somewhere to drop it is another. Israel is a tiny, crowded country of many races; about 20 per cent of its population is Muslim. Waging nuclear wars in such a region is like fighting with hand grenades in a phone box.