Chancellor Alistair Darling has ruled out reinstating the 10p tax rate for low earners, saying it would be “totally irresponsible” to rewrite the Budget. He claimed he’d already had to rewrite once after his business friends complained about corporation tax, and now his pencil had worn down to a stub.
Speaking on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, the Chancellor denied that the 10p rate row was Labour’s ‘poll tax moment’.
“It’s a completely different kettle of fish,” he said. “People power brought down the poll tax through a successful campaign of refusing to pay. However, thanks to PAYE, they have no option but to pay tax – at least, not those peasants who can’t afford the services of a good accountant.”
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Miliband One warned the Labour Party that squabbling over the tax issue was risking electoral defeat in the imminent local government elections.
“This transcends right or wrong,” he said. “I ask the Labour Party: what, ultimately, is more important – social justice, fair play and showing some basic decency to those trapped in poverty at the bottom of the heap, or allowing Gordon Brown to cling to the illusion of popular support? A fairly simple choice, I think.”
Gordon Brown, for ten years hailed as the cleverest financial genius in the universe, is said to believe that the row has been exaggerated by the media.
“Middle-class journalists like Nev of the Nev Filter, quaffing champagne in his well-appointed council penthouse and wondering how best to invest his £7-an-hour temping wages, find it all too easy to fabricate silly stories about people earning less than £18,000 a year being worse off,” said the Prime Minister. “He really has no idea how the other half live. But I watched Mary Poppins the other day, so I know that working-class people are lovable, cheeky ragamuffins, singing and dancing all the live-long day without the slightest care in the world.”
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