How the Coalition neutered Ed Balls’ mansion tax vote

The mansion tax – sorry, ‘tax fairness’ – debate is still rumbling on in the Commons, and Labour are trying to score as many political points as possible on the matter, as expected. Actually, the party’s idea to table the Opposition Day vote on this policy was a good piece of political game-playing when they announced it. But equally impressive has been the Coalition’s response to it.

The Liberal Democrats were extremely nervous about talking about how they would vote before the Eastleigh by-election. One aide told me at the time: ‘We can’t have Labour putting about on leaflets that we are opposing our own policy: we don’t want a broken promises problem.’ And then they didn’t really want to confirm that they wouldn’t support the very carefully-worded Labour motion when they were at their conference: the cheers Vince Cable got from his Social Liberal Forum audience on Friday night when he talked about bankers’ bonuses, mansion taxes, and joked that he had been called a socialist by a tabloid would have underlined that it was important to talk about their love of the mansion tax, not their contempt for the Labour motion.