Ed Miliband has called for G20 leaders to commit themselves to a global financial transaction tax ahead of Thursday's G20 Summit in Cannes.
Writing for the Huffington Post UK in a joint article with his Swedish and German counterparts, Hakan Juholt and Sigmar Gabriel, the Labour leader says there has been a palpable lack of political leadership across the world in response to the eurozone crisis.
They call for the G20 to commit a global Robin Hood Tax as well as to maintain the pace of banking reform.
“And when populations are rightly asking how a just burden sharing can be found, the G20 should commit themselves to introducing a Financial Transaction Tax across all major financial centres.
“We also need to see agreement to the separation of retail and investment banking to address the risks of a finance sector which is too interconnected and too big to fail. Better regulation of rating agencies also remains to be addressed.”
And the opposition leaders also warn against countries choosing “a simple one-size-fits-all ideological response” to solve the debt crisis.
The call echoes that of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams this morning.
Miliband writes: “Politics is about leadership, and that’s what the world badly needs from the G20 meeting in Cannes tomorrow”.
“There must be no repeat of the wait and see approach of which there has been too much recently.”
Miliband, Juholt and Gabriel say people expect “more from their elected leaders than shrugged shoulders”
As we saw in 2008, a global economic crisis can only be addressed by global economic leadership. There has been precious little of that in evidence in the past 18 months. Now is the time to turn the corner. To set out a plan that addresses the reality of faltering growth and rising unemployment. A plan that faces up to the G20 leaders’ first responsibility: the responsibility to lead.
At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, David Cameron said he supported the sentiment of Dr Rowan William's message, but stopped short of saying he would support the introduction of a Robin Hood tax.