George Osborne’s relish over welfare reform risks recontaminating the Tory brand

For the past few weeks Ed Miliband has repeated the words ‘bedroom tax’ ad nauseum. The average voter may think that such a thing exists. His obsession makes little sense without historic context. The last time a Labour opposition succeeded in attaching the word ‘tax’ to something which a Conservative government preferred to call something else was in 1990 when the Community Charge became almost universally known as the Poll Tax.