On the doorstep for the local elections the common refrain is: it’s time for a change

Spend just a few minutes on the campaign trail for next week’s local elections and it suddenly becomes clear why Labour MPs got into such a mutinous mood. When they happily voted through Gordon Brown’s abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax last year, it was argued that having 5.3 million pay a little more was worth it in order to be able to say that the basic rate of income tax had fallen. No one foresaw what is now clear: just how badly this ruse would go down with the public.

The first half-hour I spend with Tory activists in Salford gives a taste of the anger. ‘I’m a pensioner, for God’s sake, why does he take more of what little I have?’ asks one householder. ‘I’ve had enough of Mr Brown’s financial tricks,’ says a lady outside a florist. ‘He says this won’t affect anyone but that’s untrue, this will hit one in five families,’ says the manager of the Spar shop. All of them pledge to vote Conservative for the first time, in an area where David Cameron needs votes the most.

The Tories can scarcely believe their luck. Here is a tax bomb, planted under the low-paid and primed to detonate just ahead of the 1 May election. And all an unintended consequence of a manoeuvre in Gordon Brown’s final Budget. ‘At least the poll tax was deliberate,’ one activist chortled to me. Mr Brown’s complicated compensation offered on Wednesday may have assuaged Labour rebels. But it will not salve the anger on the doorsteps. The result may well be the Tories taking North Tyneside and Bury councils next week, with the possibility of a council or two in Wales.

So much attention is focusing on the Ken v.