The Tories’ tax plans are absurd. When will Labour be brave enough to say so?

Jeremy Hunt was reported to have planned a tax-cutting budget, gone back on that idea, then reinstated it in the wake of the Conservatives’ poor polling. Photograph: Reuters

As a longstanding observer of the British economy, I sympathise with the general reader trying to make sense of recent reports on what is happening to it.

One week he or she is told that inflation is falling; another week that it isn’t. One week we are reliably informed that interest rates are going to be reduced; the next that they are not. One week there is no danger of falling into recession. The next week we are informed that we are already in one.