Will the Tories avoid making McCain's tax error?

Trumpeter Lanfried

About time the Tories got their skates on. Brown is already threatening to steal their thunder.

Nicholas

Hope so. Like it when the Tories wrong foot Labour. It always provokes the clumsiest lurching of the undynamic duo Brown & Darling.

TGF UKIP

"I may not have to wait long before David Cameron reapays my faith in him." Oh Fraser, how easily are you bought off.

Doesn't the timing seem embarrassingly obvious event to diehard fan like you. A series of leaks indicate Gordon is going to cut taxes, therefore Dave thinks he must have to promise likewise. Whatever Real Labour does, Blue Labour must do too.

The one thing you are dead right on of course is the size of the tax cuts "you can bet it will be tiny" but the other even bigger certainty is that the spending cuts will also not only be tiny but, probably, phoney too. As I've posted elsewhere, the biggest certainty of all though is that no quango and no jobsworth need have any fear from the Cameron "spending cuts" no matter how pointless their existence or job.

Whatever happened to conviction conservatism in Britain Fraser and wouldn't it be nice if Dave really did repay your misplaced faith and announce a policy of real tax cuts based on an across the board cut of 2% in Gordon's bloated spending? Even I would have to shut up and cheer that. Neither, unfortunately, is a scenario I would count on though.

Mike, Brighton

TGF UKIP. 2%! I doubt that if we cut Gordon's bloated spending by 5% (plus constraining it's growth) anyone would notice other than Guardian headline writers and a few quangocrats.

Fraser Nelson

TGF, this is the thing about blogging: I have acquired a bad angel in the form of yourself, stoking my worst suspicions about the Cameroon project. Tiberius is my good angel.

I agree about conivctions, it's a point made to me by several senior Tories who share your frustration. I'm not bought off, I'm just being optimistic. Brogan says Cameron will tell us tomorrow, so we'll see.

Short the UK

Behind the curve again....

dalesman

It sounds as though Cameron and Brown are just catching up with the LibDems though, and they both rubbished their idea of tax cuts didn't they?

Alex R

Agreed.

P.S. With regards to the tax cuts offered in 1997, 2001 and 2005. 1997 was always going to be a write off. Seems little point in considering it.

2001 - The cuts offered were small and stupidly complicated. Fink says no one believed the tories; I'd say that no one understood the tories. That is the power of the Obama tax calculator. It does ask number of kids, number of hours worked, size of savings, if a carer etc etc etc. Asks for three inputs and you get a number.

2005 - Howard had no time. Strategy was to prevent total meltdown.

My point is that comparisons with the past three election campaigns are of little use.

IanB

Brown/Darling will resort to the tax credit system, making people beg for more of their own money back.

Surely the Tories could make political capital by promising to scrap this nonsense (along with the raft of civil servants that administer it) and let people keep more of their own money in the first place?

The added advantage is that, since tax credits are Brown's baby, it's a policy he won't steal.

Michael McGowan

Barack Obama's so-called tax cuts are offset by substantial tax rises elsewhere. That is what the Lib Dems are proposing as well and no doubt the Tories will follow suit.....

William Norton

Alex R:"2001 - The cuts offered were small and stupidly complicated. Fink says no one believed the tories; I'd say that no one understood the tories."

Of more interest is that Fink doesn't seem to know that the policy in 2001 and in 2005 was sharing the proceeds of growth, i.e. spending to rise slower than the growth in the economy. All that's changed is the slogan.

JR

I think the Tory's message is hugely confused. They need to articulate in a much clearer way how they will cut tax and why.

And then they need to link that with a discussion of clearly prioritised cuts in public spending - by saying what they don't want the Government to do -Daniel Finkelstein has really clearly set out the challenge on the second point. Talking about cuts in spending linked to unidentified 'waste' is a mistake and actually an error. The reason Government spending has gone up is because the Government is trying to do more, the vast majority of additional spending has been on programme spending not administration. Largely this has been done by a range of outsourced contracts and PFI deals. So without changing or abandoning current activities undertaken by the state there can be no big changes in public spending.

So the challenge for the Tories is to articulate what they would do differently - a case in point is Tax Credits where they have an implicit policy to keep the whole system with only one change (increase the generousity for married couples). They could instead make a clear arguement for keeping the tax credits system but undertaking radical reform so that far less people are covered by the scheme and those would mainly be the people on the margin of work and benefits to ensure work pays. They could then redirect the saved money (i.e. the money that would otherwise be paid in tax credits) into lower marginal rates of tax or preferably an increase in personal allowances. This would make some people worse off but would avoid the Government taxing to redistribute on the margins.

Personally I think in a year's time a higher rate of tax for those paying more than £150,000 would be a vote winner in order coupled with a further increase in personal allowances. I'd model it dynamically of course (there you go Fraser!) but something that helped the many not the few (even allowing for a bit of tax flight) is something most people would vote for.

I'd also increase the rate of Jobseekers Allowance for people with good work records - the middle class are about to realise all the attacks on scroungers over the years means they can only claim £60 a week for 6 months if they become unemployed. It's going to have a huge devisive impact.

John Page

And Monday's telegraph has labour planning tax cuts so the Tory flatfoots have failed again.

Paul B

JohnPage is right, last out the blocks, playing catch up again. DC & GO need a severe kick up the proverbial, DC is really not getting it

TGF UKIP

Fraser, your aged alter ego is, I'm sure, going to delighted by your characterisation. For my part I'm glad to hear that all my wind ups do have some, even if insufficient, effect.

Clearly, to achieve the transition of optimism to realism on your part some further stoking is required and as I suspect I will need all the stoking practice I can get in preparation for my after life, more stoking there will assuredly be.

I guess I could also make the change from TGF UKIP to becoming Screwtape.

Tiberius

Be careful, TGF UKIP, that you don't cross over into that other work of C S Lewis and become the March Hare.

Sue Denim

Would that be CS Lewis Carroll?

Tiberius

How to make an ass of yourself at the end of a long day at the office.

Water

"I say in my political column this week that Cameron must 'offer tax cuts before Brown does'" shifts in policies inline with the opposition did not act as a testament to idiocy in America. A shift by the left to the right’s point (if DC gets his foot in first and implements your thought) it may not make any difference, and then again maybe it will who is to say.

Fraser Nelson

TGF, I would change if I were you. Your name right now makes it sound like you're coming from a UKIP perspective so other CoffeeHousers will discount what you say on party political basis. This is a shame as your arguments reflect a small but significant wing of Tory thinking. Screwtape isn't bad...

TGF UKIP aka Screwtape

Ah yes, Fraser, but think of all the pleasure I deprive myself of from the reaction to the name UKIP from the Cameron/Clarke wing of the Coffee House as well as all the idignation I can feign when one of the more ignorant twins UKIP with the BNP in the same sentence.

I do like Screwtape just as I liked Hoi Polloi, one of my other early pseudonyms, but TGF UKIP does allow me to occasionally point out that UKIP is currently the only UK conservative party as their 20 point policy summary demonstrates so well.

I will think about the point you make though.