Taxing Times

YouGov has run the numbers, and here they are.

That is a very comfortable majority in every group to give priority to public spending over tax cuts, including 62 per cent of people overall, 52 per cent of those who have already decided to vote Conservative, 58 per cent of those who voted Leave, 67 per cent of those aged 50 to 64, 64 per cent of those aged 65 and over, 64 per cent of those in social groups ABC1 (eight points higher than in the C2DE bracket), 61 per cent of people in England (higher than in Wales), and 63 per cent of people in the South outside London (tied with London, higher than in Wales or the Midlands, and six points higher than in the North).

For cutting taxes even if it meant spending less on public services, the figures are 22 per cent overall, 36 per cent of confirmed Conservative voters, 29 per cent of Leave voters, 20 per cent of the late-middle-aged, 24 per cent of the elderly, 22 per cent of the middle classes and above, 23 per cent in England, and 22 per cent in the non-metropolitan South, which is lower than in London, Wales, the Midlands or the North.

On a programme of cutting taxes when the other side would not, then no political party has won an overall majority at a General Election since 1992, 32 years, eight Elections and eight Prime Ministers ago. 42 per cent of adults have incomes that do not reach the threshold for income tax. No, not "before benefits". Those are taxable income. Two in five adults have gross incomes, from all sources, of less of than one thousand pounds per month. Of those in that position, the great majority are in work, rising to the overwhelming majority of those below pensionable age. If that does not sound like the Britain that you know, then you need to get out more.

That is before we start about inheritance tax, which is paid only on the estates of people who died richer than 24 out of 25 people who died in Britain that year. Ask almost anyone whether they had ever been a beneficiary of an estate that had been subject to inheritance tax. If they have, then they are probably in politics or its schoolfriend media.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.