Perhaps if, as Andrew Rawnsley says, it is "not a good look" for
the Tories "to be the apologists for the super-rich avoiding tax", they should
have thought of that rather sooner than a few weeks before the general election.
(Party manifestos: furtive schemes speak more eloquently than flowery
words,12/04/15)
Despite having had 5 years of being bullied into action by Margaret Hodge's Public Accounts Committee, the Tories have succeeded only in watching the annual tax gap rise to approximately £70bn, whilst cutting HMRC staff by 20 per cent.
Tory MPs may well now be complaining that their "robotically repetitive and narrowly negative messages" are not winning them votes, but what did they expect? If your party is dominant in a coalition government, and reduces tax rates for the rich, imposes austerity measures which have greatest impact on society's most vulnerable, begins the destruction of the welfare state and NHS, and furthermore promises to take government spending back to levels last seen in the 1930s, you should expect to be despised by the majority of the electorate. For the Tories, there isn't a "more positive gear", and even if one is conjured up in their manifesto, voters, mindful of what happened with VAT and the NHS last time around, will not be fooled again.
Now is not the time for Rawnsley or anyone else to be showing sympathy for the most callous party in modern times!
Despite having had 5 years of being bullied into action by Margaret Hodge's Public Accounts Committee, the Tories have succeeded only in watching the annual tax gap rise to approximately £70bn, whilst cutting HMRC staff by 20 per cent.
Tory MPs may well now be complaining that their "robotically repetitive and narrowly negative messages" are not winning them votes, but what did they expect? If your party is dominant in a coalition government, and reduces tax rates for the rich, imposes austerity measures which have greatest impact on society's most vulnerable, begins the destruction of the welfare state and NHS, and furthermore promises to take government spending back to levels last seen in the 1930s, you should expect to be despised by the majority of the electorate. For the Tories, there isn't a "more positive gear", and even if one is conjured up in their manifesto, voters, mindful of what happened with VAT and the NHS last time around, will not be fooled again.
Now is not the time for Rawnsley or anyone else to be showing sympathy for the most callous party in modern times!
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