Last week’s Lib Dem conference dealt with a promise Nick Clegg wished he had never made. This week’s Labour conference is in part about promises Ed Miliband and Ed Balls won’t make at all, or at least not for a few years. The Shadow Chancellor was cagey when he appeared on BBC Breakfast this morning, saying ‘I can make no commitment now to reverse any of those cuts or the tax rises, because we don’t know what the economy’s going to be like in two months’ time let alone in two years’ time when the election comes’.
Having kicked up a real song and dance about the government’s decision to scrap the 50p top rate of income tax in the Budget, Balls also conceded to the BBC interviewers that he couldn’t commit to reimposing the rate:
‘Right now the government is, as I said, spending £3 billion for a tax cut on millionaires, they’re only putting up taxes on pensioners by less than that so, right now, if you stopped both those things, the Treasury would be better off not worse off.
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