Brown’s tax trick

While the world’s eyes have been on polling booths in the back streets of Ohio, the British political scene may appear to have been becalmed. But it isn’t so. In the past week a couple of notable salvoes have been fired in the direction of the government’s economic policy, which by rights ought to inflict a serious wound in the side of the Chancellor. They came from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and Barclays Capital, which are both scathing of Gordon Brown’s chances of sticking to his so-called ‘Golden Rule’ and of his sophistry in attempting to convince us that the rule will be stuck to. While the term Golden Rule will mean little to most voters, the consequences of the Chancellor’s failure to stick to it certainly will: they are tax rises of £10 billion a year, equivalent to three pence on the basic rate of income tax, which will become inevitable soon after the general election.