Pollsters talk about the tipping point – the moment when public opinion changes. They think one of these might be about to happen in relation to tax. I’m certain of it. Together with 100,000 other residents, I tipped last week when Westminster’s council-tax demand thumped on to my doormat with a 28.1 per cent increase. I confess that I had not noticed a 28.1 per cent improvement in this Tory-controlled council’s services; 28.1 per cent more litter, yes, and probably the same increase in the number of Special Brew-swilling drunks on our doorsteps. The council has been complaining that a quarter of its residents have vanished from the electoral register. I am not surprised; indeed, I am planning to go missing myself.
A few million more voters may tip after next Sunday’s tax rises. Perhaps if they were getting Mr Blair’s promised ‘world-class’ public services they would be happy to see their pay packets eroded for the first time since 1975. But one in five children are leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate; we are the only country in the world with one million people on our hospital waiting-lists, and Londoners are now six times more likely to be mugged than New Yorkers.
Our public services are certainly globally superior in one respect. We are spending world-class amounts on them. The NHS hit European levels of funding last year, and is set to have a budget so big that it will soon be the equivalent of the world’s 34th largest economy. By the end of this parliament, spending on education will be ahead of the European average. The government is now spending £1.25 billion a day. By the time you have read this article, another £3 million will have been pumped out of a Treasury that once had an institutional resistance to such fiscal incontinence.
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