Unhappy new tax year on Thursday when the Tories will be the Sheriff of Nottingham disguised as Robin Hood.
Stealing another £12billion a year in Income Tax and National Insurance, primarily by freezing thresholds, while insisting they are a low tax party will be breathtaking by the standards of a UK Conservative Government that’s a stranger to the truth.
The authoritative Resolution Foundation estimating Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt will grab an extra £25bn annually within five years from Tory plans to keep 20p and 40p rates at £12,570 and £50,270 exposes a great tax stealth robbery.
Ensnaring 3.2-million low earners in the tax net as a result is galling but the most significant impact may be the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer exposing the hollowness of dubious Conservative claims to be the party of low taxation.
And when it’s higher taxation for shoddier public services with the NHS knocked to its knees and neglected schools crumbling, an electoral trick is broken.
Tory Ministers arguing a 37% tax burden on their watch may be the highest since shortly after the Second World War but is still below, say, France, echoes similar protestations that Britain’s rocketed debt remains below many economic rivals.
You’ve got to laugh when the same Tories and then Liberal Democrat co-conspirators in 2010 falsely claimed Britain was bankrupt under Labour, teetering like Greece on the edge of a financial abyss, despite national debt being more of a steep hill than today’s mighty mountain as a result of Conservative economic failure.
It’s why trust has gone in the Tories, Sunak’s personal rating falling behind Keir Starmer’s in an Opinium poll finding Labour sustaining a healthy 15% lead.
People know in their pockets, wage packets and bank accounts that Britain is Two Nations.
One is the real world of soaring prices, rising taxes and a crushing cost of living crisis.
The other is the dishonest political rhetoric of Sunak and Hunt taking them for fools.
The Sheriff of Nottingham Tory Party is no Robin Hood.
