From Darling with love

Marcus Cotswell

I know this won't be a particularly popular view here but the Treasury's position is actually quite plausible if you look at it objectively. It's just that as politics it sucks. It is perfectly legitimate for the Government to decide that the 10p rate was insufficiently discriminating in terms of who it helped, and to try to help those it wants to more directly instead. (Which is not to say it's the way you or I might do things, but that's a separate issue).

The real bone of contention for me is that it was dressed up as a tax simpification measure (just like the CGT debacle) and in the end it has ended up making things even more complicated - tweaks to the Tax Credit system here, extra payments through the Winter Fuel Allowance Mechanism there ... the list goes on.

Sheer madness.

mark

I thought the exchange in PMQs rather disappointing - both sides claiming to be addressing "the issue" whilst in fact neither were doing this.

Isn't the issue the overall tax take that has gone steadily up over the last several years (under both parties) and the ridiculous system of taking money away and then paying it back.

There has to be a simpler system that empowers people to improve?

David Lindsay

What u-turn? "Parliament in action" is the correct way to describe it. Or how would you prefer the Executive to relate to the House of Commons?

The gall of David Cameron at PMQs! He heaped praise on Gwyneth Dunwoody for holding successive governments to account, but then heaped scorn on Gordon Brown for allowing and enabling his government to be held to account by MPs.

And did you miss the Cameron seduction move on the Blairites in general and Andrew Adonis (practically offered the position of Education Secretary) in particular in Monday's Telegraph? Or are you deliberately ignoring the political story of the year?

John

"It is perfectly legitimate for the Government to decide that the 10p rate was insufficiently discriminating in terms of who it helped, and to try to help those it wants to more directly instead" - oh, for Pete's sake. The intention was never to help those who need it, otherwise that would have been happening from the start. It took a near-rebellion (near, because Field turned out to be a soggy paper bag instead of the strong man of principle he likes to be portrayed as - well, now we know what he is really made of, and it's not pretty) to promise to look at the possibility of maybe helping those who need it. Do you get that last bit? McBean is only promising to look at it. There is exactly nil of substance in any of this nonsense.

Ann

A PM forced to make a humiliating climb-down after several of his prominent backbenchers revolted, is normally called a U-turn in British politics, David, and you know this perfectly well even if you pretend otherwise in your attempt to shield your sainted McBean from humiliation. Furthermore, Cameron was doing his job by mocking this disastrous, pathetic excuse for a PM for getting himself into this totally avoidable mess through his own stupidity. Calling this stupidity 'enabling his government' is silly Labour-speak, as well as being fractured syntax (or in other words, complete misinterpretation of what the word 'enabling' means: you don't 'enable' a government to be hamstrung, at most you enable your MPs to exert power over the government).

MartinSharman

Notice how the paragraph numbers start at 2? I'm loving the irony.... He's simply not very good with numbers! Terrible handwriting too.

David Lindsay

They didn't "revolt", Ann. If he'd done this after an actual vote on the floor of the House (like Major over VAT, for example), then that would be a different matter.

MPs are not elected as lobby fodder, and if sometimes they get things by not acting as such, then what's wrong with that? They are only doing their job. And note that the abolition of the 10p tax rate remains in place.

In all the fuss about the 10p tax rate, no one seems to have mentioned a crucial factor. These things are decided by people with little or no concept of a period between one’s children’s leaving home and one’s own retirement.

No one they know had children much before the age of 30, and no one they know is or will be working much after the age of 55.

Their last child’s departure and the end of working their life will coincide almost exactly. The idea of a 15 or 20 year gap between these two events, as is entirely normal among people previously paying 10p tax, is completely lost on them.

Meanwhile, a proper story. David Cameron has effectively offered the position of Education Secretary to a Labour peer who was Schools Minister under Tony Blair. He has done this publicly, in the Daily Telegraph on Monday. He has not been rebuffed.

But if you hear or read about this ANYWHERE, then do please let me know - davidaslindsay@hotmail.com

Pete Hoskin

David Lindsay: Just so you know, Adonis did rebuff Cameron's overtures. See here:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/politics/threelinewhip/april08/andrewadonisrefusestodefect.htm

David Lindsay

Well, he took his time! And anyway, the fact that the offer could seriously have been made is enough.