Back from sick leave

Back from unscheduled sick leave straight into the election.

Depressingly, the Howard Flight affair underlines just how far away we are from being given an open and proper choice on tax and spend.

I must say I'd thought when the Tories said 'are you thinking what we're thinking?' they meant what Flight implied- ie don't worry, once we're elected, we'll have a proper go at the whole shooting match.

But it seems I was wrong, and the Tories have now gone and painted themselves in.

You'd think- well, I'd think- enough people would want lower taxes to make small government a saleable proposition.

True, history is not encouraging.

For example, I've been leafing through British Political Opinion, a collection of Gallup Polls between 1937 and 2000. And it turns out tax has rarely featured particularly highly among the hot issues.

Even when Thatcher was elected in 1979, people who thought public services should be extended even at the cost of higher taxes, outnumbered those that wanted lower taxes by two to one. By 1997 the ratio was ten to one.

Of course, many people really mean someone else's taxes should be increased. Not theirs. And that highly visible taxes like the Council Tax are disproportionately unpopular. But by and large, tax has not been a knockout issue.

Yet surely things are changing. Those 66 stealth taxes and the almost universal agreement that Labour will hike taxes again after the election does seem to be having some effect of opinion.

YouGov's Budget poll showed that those who want more tax and spend still outnumber tax cutters, but the margin is now quite narrow (49 per cent against 41 per cent).

Such a shame no party has the balls to pick that up.