Labour and the Conservatives are both wrong about income tax

Never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake. On the other hand, when your opponent has made a mistake try not to match him by making an equal blunder of your own.

That’s not how Westminster politics works, of course. For reasons that presumably make sense to the respective parties, Labour and the Conservatives have each managed to cock-up their tax policies. Specifically, they are both wrong on the politics of the 50% rate of income tax.

That is, the Tories should never have cut the rate of tax paid by those few Britons earning over £150,000 and Labour should not be promising to restore the 50% rate.

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This is not an argument about finances but about signalling. The Tories may well be right that raising – or, rather, re-raising – the top rate of tax to 50 pence in the pound will not actually raise very much, if any, additional revenue.