Labour MP and junior Minister Angela Smith announced she was resigning over the abolition of the 10p tax rate… and then changed her mind and decided she quite liked the ministerial salary after all.
Quite aside from the bizarre dithering, Ms Smith is a Treasury Minister (PPS to Yvette Cooper, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and yet it appears to have taken her a whole year to realise that abolishing the lowest tax band means those on the lowest incomes pay more - the changes were announced by Gordon Brown in his last budget in 2007. What sort of people do we have running the country now?
Incidentally, a number of people have raised the 10p band on the doorstep. Labour have taken their core voters for granted since they got into Government, and now they are hitting them where it hurts in the pocket. Labour voters who have been let down have the chance to send a message to Gordon Brown on 1st May - by voting Conservative and evicting their hopeless Labour Councillors.
Quite agree - the 10p tax rate has come up again and again with voters. It’s clearly a national issue that’s entered into peoples’ minds for their local election calculations.