“Never hate your enemies – it affects your judgement”. This advice from Michael Corleone is very relevant to Gordon Brown, who makes his worst mistakes when he thinks he’d destabilising Tories. He loved how scared they were about talk of an October election last year, but didn’t realise how stupid he’d look when he didn’t call one. The speculation rebounded on him.
Same, I suspect, with his tax cut. Still no news today, but people are expecting £15 billion. This figure is actually a guesstimate from Robert Chote of the IFS, who told the FT last week that he wouldn’t be surprised if Brown were to cut taxes by the tune of 1% of GDP. In no time, this figure had been distilled down to £500 for every family and expectations were whetted. The Treasury should have shot this down instantly, but I suspect Brown was thinking too hard about how it would go down in Norman Shaw South (the Cameroons’ nest).
Whatever Darling pulls out of his Santa’s sack next week, I imagine it will fall very short of a £15bn tax cut. If so, Brown will look like a plonker – as he did over the 2p tax con, the 10p tax con, the bottled elections and all the other times he’s set himself up for a fall in his enthusiasm to screw the Tories. You see, the Gordfather just can’t help himself. His run of good luck has to end sometime. The higher expectations are for his pre-Budget report, the more likely it will be to rebound on him.
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