The revelation that a rise in the VAT rate was being considered by the government up until the very last minute, and apparently in the PBR figures themselves, is part of a greater truth that the level of borrowing that the country has embarked on means that taxes will have to rise considerably or there will have to be radical cuts in spending.
Brown hopes that delaying until after the election the planned combination of spending cuts and tax rises means that the public won’t cotton on to what is going to happen before they cast their ballots. But the signs are that this is not going to work; the 45p red herring failed because the media immediately grasped how, in revenue terms, insignificant it was.
Once numbers move from million to billion to trillion it is hard to keep count. But the PBR brought home to the media just how bad the public finances are — Labour has lost every news cycle since because the press have concentrated on this not Labour’s stimulus package.
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