Here’s one aspect of the Labour leadership contest that has passed without much comment:
how many of the contenders want to extend the 50p tax rate from those earning over £150,000 to those earning over £100,000. Ed Miliband’s one of them; so is Diane Abbott; and so too – as he reminds us in interview with Left Forward Forward today – is Ed Balls. Sure, only one of these candidates has a
realistic chance of becoming leader – but another could easily end up as shadow chancellor. So it’s fairly probable that this will be official Labour policy in the not-too-distant.
If so, the impetus behind the tax hike will be more presentational than anything else: Labour will sell it as both a way to reduce the deficit and as a “progressive” dividing line with the coalition. But it’s unlikely to work as smoothly as that. For starters, it could rekindle the same internal
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