Labour Determined to Lose the Middle Ground

To Treasury questions in the Commons. There are two kinds of tax the public particularly detest. The first are flat-rate taxes where the burden is equal regardless of ability to pay. The other, which has the potential to turn this otherwise mild nation into a seething mob, are retrospective taxes. Here, only the gift of clairvoyancy could provide the public with enough information to avoid paying the tax.
The new ‘green’ increases to Vehicle Excise Duty certainly fall into that second category. If the Daily Telegraph is to be believed there will be increases for over 9 million drivers.
Senior Treasury officials should have advised Ministers the increases, following huge rises in petrol prices, would not be perceived as ‘green’ and acceptable but simply unfair and revenue-raising. This policy would be hard enough to push through in good times (see Labour Govts 1997-2005) but with current polls almost below sea-level, it looks like electoral suicide.
Angela Eagle was first Treasury Minister to make a stab at the defence. Treasury Questions sound a lot like Environment Questions these days; all the talk was of "global emissions", "oil dependency" and "eco-innovation". Ange, who was so completely and utterly sacked by Tony Blair, has regained some composure since she was allowed to be a Minister again. (She was totally ineffective at the Home Office where she tried to give the impression of impervious self-certainty by playing ‘Mini-me’ to the arrogant Blunkett.)
Next up to the Dispatch Box was the slinky Yvette Cooper who is a highly confident performer. If it rankles that others less able have been promoted to Cabinet ahead of her, it doesn’t show. She is certainly eons more entertaining than ‘Badger’ Darling whose turgid delivery almost bored the Opposition into submission. The Chancellor was helped along by a host of pliant and supine Labour backbenchers who each painted a picture of the last 11 years as nothing short of an economic Shangri-la. It was left to wealthy Conservative members to raise concerns about the impact of various tax policies on low-income families. Ministers couldn't even guess which income groups would be most effected by VED changes.
The session certainly came alive, just briefly, when Dennis Skinner jumped up to champion the successful job creation programmes in his constituency (Bolsover). The Treasury team all smiled nervously as Dennis’s Derbyshire tones boomed around the chamber, but eventually their static grins slowly began to fall. His contribution was received like an impromptu wedding speech by a well-meaning but thoroughly pissed uncle.
Finally we got to the real business of VED increases. George Osbourne, with a delivery which can be described as sneering conceit actually summarised the Government’s position most accurately when he said they were “sleepwalking into another 10p tax fiasco.”
There appears to be no shift in the offing, no indication of a more flexible approach. Labour MPs took it all glumly and with abject resignation - it was like they were listening to the forecast of another washed-out Bank Holiday.