One letter, that’s all it takes. After 38 City types wrote a letter to the Daily
Telegraph this morning, urging George Osborne to drop the 50p rate of income tax, Westminster types have been chirruping on about it ever since. All three party leaders have had their say, except,
so far as I can tell, Ed Miliband — although Ed Balls stood in for him
anyway.
Of all the responses, it is David Cameron’s that is the most noteworthy and perhaps even surprising. Speaking about deficit reduction on the Jeremy Vine Show earlier, the PM was unequivocal: ‘We have to try and do this in a way that is fair so that the broadest backs bear the biggest burden,’ he said, ‘That’s why we haven’t changed, for instance, the 50p tax rate.’ Which is to say, he matched Nick Clegg in his rhetoric against cutting the 50p rate.
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