Peter Hoskin

A Lib Dem demand that the Tories should get behind

Remember those Lib Dem calls for a mansion tax at the weekend? I said at the time that, ‘the Lib Dems appear to be drawing more attention to which of their own policies they are fighting for within government, whether those policies make it to the statute books or not.’ Well, now they’re at it again.

Nick Clegg is giving a speech this morning in which he’ll urge George Osborne to go ‘further and faster’ in raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 a year. It was the stand-out policy of the Lib Dem manifesto, so it’s hardly controversial that Clegg should want to see it enacted ASAP. But it’s still striking that he’s making this appeal in public. A year ago, he’d have emphasised what the coalition was already doing to raise the threshhold.

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