There lies a contradiction at the heart of Labour’s diagnosis of what ails Britain. On the one hand, a nation afflicted by decaying public services, rising homelessness and faltering local government finances. On the other, “working people” (a deliberately undefined term) will not have to pay more. If this is an unstable proposition in the midst of an election campaign, it is likely to topple over in government.
Labour has ruled out raising the big three: income tax, national insurance and VAT. But that still leaves hundreds of billions of pounds worth of potential rises and levies. The alternative is painful spending cuts — something a brand new Labour government with a potentially landslide majority would be unlikely to implement.
