Daniel Finkelstein has been fighting a heroic but rather lonely battle warning those of us on the right about the limitations of the tax-cutting message. He’s been on the lookout for what he wonderfully terms “punk tax-cutters” and he and I have an exchange of emails on the subject in this week’s magazine – read it here. He didn’t quite give me the savaging he did poor old Nick Clegg. But then again, I’m not for unfunded tax cuts. As far as I know, no Conservative is either.
I’ve always seen this charge as an Aunt Sally. Gordon Brown surely qualifies as a punk-tax cutter given that he announced an unfunded cut before the Crewe by-election and will doubtless do so again on Monday. But Tories have always wanted permanent, funded tax cuts – I mean, can any CoffeeHouser name any MP who has every argued otherwise? In my view, the Cameroons spent too long tilting at these Tory windmills, when there were real-life, cash-squandering dragons to slay on the Labour benches.
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