10p Tax: Robin Hood-ism in reverse

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Although it may be hard to believe, given the wall-to-wall coverage of the last two weeks, Gordon Brown had almost gotten away with it. For over a year, his last budget as Chancellor was characterised as a mercurial example of clever book-keeping, lowering the basic rate of tax while maintaining public-service spending and still managing to abide by his self-imposed “Golden rules” on public borrowing.

Perhaps the media was too caught up with Blair’s immanent departure? The painting of Gordon Brown as the all-conquering hero arriving to save us from the shallow, empty aestheticism of Blairism was well under-way and analysis of the 2007 Budget would have been denounced as plain, old-fashioned party-pooping; an irony lost, it would seem, on Her Majesty’s Press. Despite having been on the table for a year, it was only as D-day approached that the media noticed that abolishing the 10p tax band was Robin Hood-ism in reverse. Indeed, it was only two weeks ago that we collectively noticed that Gordon Brown had completed the transition of New Labour into Not Labour long before he had even assumed power.

How inconceivable it seems, even five years ago, that a Labour government would have passed a budget that took from over five million working poor - of whom students funding their increasingly expensive degrees through increasingly necessary McJobs are a significant minority - to fund tax cuts for the comfortable. This is Gordon Brown’s legacy, the man touted as the courageous and principled egalitarian who in reality has shown nothing but cowardice in the face of issues of moral and political gravity. Having caved into the Catholic lobby over embryonic research which has the potential to save lives and relieve the suffering of countless millions worldwide, having made the wrong choices on ID cards and the extension of police powers to detain without charge, having bankrolled the Iraq war without whispering a peep of dissent and having now shown complete disregard for the corner-stone principle of progressive taxation, Brown is proving himself a far more dangerous figure to the Labour movement than any champion the Tories may send into battle.

Timing has seen to it that such a policy can’t simply be swept under the carpet. An economic crisis looms as the financial markets struggle to recover from the sub-prime fiasco and world food prices are sky-rocketing. These are not the days when even the most ardently Thatcherite neo-liberal can turn a blind eye to the plight of the British labourer, although Brown must wish this to be the case. While in 2007 Brown allayed fears of being seen as “too Socialist” for Middle England by the base-rate of tax by 2p, having done so at the expense of the poor and not the super-rich is mortifying. The Labour back-benches are fuming, talk of revolt is buzzing around Westminster and revolt on such a flagship policy will spell the end for Brown, long before he has the opportunity to lose the next general election.

Rightfully, then, his approval ratings have fallen faster than any Prime Minister since that suffered by Neville Chamberlain in 1940 – who, as Hitler invaded Norway, had much bigger problems to contend with than a dip in house prices and a yes/no decision on whether to hold an early election.

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