Raising taxes on those who work hard for little money could be the end of Labour

Coffee Housers will soon be piling in with their own take on Alistair Darling’s performance on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show this morning — he seemed to accept the abolition of the 10% income tax band had created serious problems by promising to return to the matter in future budgets (maybe even this year’s pre-Budget Report) — but I have seen the impact of the scrapping of the 10% band at first hand.
 
My part-time cleaner — who works for me several hours a day — is now £8 a month worse off after tax as a result of Gordon Brown’s decision to double the starting rate of tax in his last Budget as Chancellor. Now £96 a year is not a crippling loss, even for lowish-paid cleaners (and I will make it up to her by increasing her pay), but she hardly deserves to be worse off in any way.