The politics of pasties

The row over the so-called pasty tax is a proxy. It is really a row about whether David Cameron and George Osborne get what it is like to worry about the family budget each week.
 
In truth, I suspect that they don’t. But I think the same probably goes for Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and the vast majority of journalists. Most of the politics of class in Westminster, as opposed to the country, is the narcissism of small difference.
 
The best thing the coalition could do now is hold its nerve. The Budget did reveal that support for it is shallow. But, as one leading pollster said to me yesterday, if they handle the tanker strike right, they’ll be ahead again by May — the next time anyone is voting in an actual election. Right now, what matters is not the politics but the economics.
 
If the Tories are going to win a majority at the next election, they are going to need growth. In the current circumstances, you’re not going to give growth a chance without taking some unpopular decisions on the top rate of tax, airport capacity and the like.