These People Are Supposed to be Tories

Looks more like a Labour smash and grab to me.

A flagship Tory pledge to cut income tax for millions of working people could be ditched to help pay for the NHS.

Chancellor Philip Hammond is poised to postpone or even scrap the manifesto promise to raise the starting threshold for both the basic and 40p rates of income tax in this month’s Budget.

A senior Tory source said the pledge was ‘up for grabs’ following Theresa May’s decision to announce a £20billion-a-year funding boost for the NHS. Freezing income tax thresholds could raise £2billion a year.

Well, Gordon Brown demonstrated that a manifesto promise wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. May and Hammond are merely following in that fine tradition. Thereby demonstrating that politicians are corrupt sleazebags whose word cannot be relied upon.

And, of course, they always take the easy option; shaking down the ordinary person for ever more cash. There are other options;

Fellow Tory Neil O’Brien said he would be ‘surprised’ if Mr Hammond went ahead with the move and urged him to focus on measures that would not hit working families, such as trimming Britain’s £14billion foreign aid budget.

Don’t trim it, end it. Oh but it gets worse…

Mr Hammond is also considering slashing the VAT threshold for small firms. Cutting the threshold from £85,000 to £43,000 would hit half a million firms and boost Treasury receipts by £1billion to £1.5billion a year. Mike Cherry, of the Federation of Small Businesses, warned Mr Hammond against a ‘blatant tax grab’.

Well, yes. Two of my clients are well under the threshold. This would put them into it. It’s rampant theft to make May appealing to the electorate and secure the next election. Pure populism – see what I did there?