The Tories must ready themselves for the coming tax battle

You may not agree with the specifics, but one of the successes of the Lib Dem conference so far has been to shift the debate about our fiscal recovery from one wholly about spending cuts to one about tax changes too.  This is a necessary step.  For reasons which have been delved into by Danny Finkelstein, spending restraint alone won’t be enough to tackle Brown’s debt mountain.  There will have to be tax rises.  And, what’s more, they will have to be efficient and – as far as possible – fair.

These points are made by Jackie Ashley in today’s Guardian, who argues that Labour should move as quickly as possible onto the issue of taxes, because they’re getting routed when it comes to spending cuts.  Personally, I have little doubt that they’ll do just that – and soon.