A storm in an inherited tea cup

The supposed Tory split on inheritance tax is big news this morning, making both the front pages of the Mail and the Telegraph and the 8.10 slot on the Today Programme. But as split stories go this one really doesn’t have much going for it. It requires a stretch of even the journalistic imagination to believe that Ken Clarke’s comments revealed some fundamental disagreement between him and George Osborne. Indeed, if Clarke was guilty of anything it was revealing what Tory high command is fretting about in public.

Given the state of the public finances, it is hard to believe that raising the inheritance tax threshold should be a priority. The Tories will do it because it is one of the few concrete pledges they’ve made. But it is, realistically, going to have to wait until late in the parliament.