Been listening to the response on Five Live to the local elections yesterday and it has been a non-stop parade of longterm Labour voters saying they couldn’t do it this time, that they either didn’t bother to vote, or voted for the Lib Dems or even the Tories. The straw that broke the camel’s back for most of these people? As I said on Wis[s]e Words last week, it’s the 10p tax.
By abolishing the 10p tax band while cutting the 22p tax band to 20p, Labour basically paid for tax cuts for the rich(er) with tax raises for the poor. It removed the final figleaf of respectability from New Labour, who until then had still been able to argue that despite all their crimes abroad, despite the pandering to the rich and the hollowing out of the welfare state, they were still dedicated to helping the poor. But the moment they shafted the poorest in society to pay for a middle class tax cut while being too scared to raise taxes on the truly rich, the little what differed Labour from the Tories was lost.
Which means Labour has lost their one big scare tactic: “vote for us or the Tories get in”. At this point, whatever the Tories do couldn’t be any worse.