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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
William Keegan

This is not the 1970s. Tory pledges to cut taxes are absurd

Black and white photograph of Geoffrey Howe emerging from No 11 to a phalanx of photographers and reporters, with an old Rover car waiting for him
Geoffrey Howe, Thatcher’s tax-cutting chancellor, emerges from No 11 to deliver his budget in 1981. Photograph: Kenneth Saunders

Whenever I told him things were going from bad to worse, my father used to nod sagely and say: “It was ever thus.” However, I wonder what he would have said now about the state of the country and the “governing” Conservative party.

In a leadership race whose inanity almost beggars belief, the two very rightwing contenders seem obsessed with establishing their Thatcherite credentials without, as far as I can see, having a clue what Thatcherism was really about.

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