Tories turn the tables on tax

Analysis
By Mark Sanders
Political correspondent, BBC News

Tax has often been a key Tory campaign issue

"Ducks go quack, cows go moo and Labour put up taxes", it's a golden oldie Conservative sound bite from the 1992 general election campaign.

The Tories claimed that Labour's "tax bombshell" would mean the average voter would have to pay more than £1,000.

They were comforted by their own enamelled ideology, they were the tax cutters, Labour were the tax raisers. The times, they are a changing.

The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, has now dropped his own tax bombshell; well, really it was the first in a series of controlled fiscal explosions: the Conservatives are unlikely to go into the next election promising to cut taxes.

It is all part of a strategy to show that the party is not addicted to low taxes at any cost.

The recent statement of Conservative aims, "Built to Last", states: "economic stability must come before tax cuts" (as opposed to economic instability before tax cuts?).

No more dogma?

David Cameron is desperate to convince voters that he is changing his party root and branch. So what better than to publicly renounce the sacred Tory talisman of tax cuts?

Some of the modernisers have long felt that a dogged commitment to tax cuts should be revised.

One proto-Cameroon, who was intimately involved in helping shape Conservative strategy at the last general election, told me a while back that personally they had wanted the party to go into the 2005 campaign not promising to cut taxes at all.

Tory fire should have been concentrated solely on Labour's tax and spending plans, they said. In his speech, Mr Osborne acknowledged that not committing to a reduction in taxation would be a "disappointment" to instinctive tax cutters within the party.

But the Cameroons are more than happy to have a tussle with the Right on tax, believing that it would prove to voters that the Conservatives are changing and that Mr Cameron is tough enough to tame his party.

Romantic tryst?

Mr Osborne did not abandon the faith completely, arguing that we still "need to move towards lower taxes".

The Tory approach to tax cuts is perhaps now a little like how to lovers approach each other longingly across the silver screen - ie in slow motion.

Distancing himself now from tax cuts, arguing that nobody can make credible promises to lower taxes before a general election when nobody knows what the true state of the public finances will be, gives Mr Osborne some wriggle room if he were to take over at the Treasury.

In a sense, the Conservatives under Mr Cameron are trying to rehabilitate themselves on tax, in a similar way that Labour did when Tony Blair became leader of his party.

Labour tried to shed their image as "high taxers and reckless spenders" now the Conservatives are trying to show they are not "low taxers and low spenders".

Mr Osborne's speech does represent a significant shift in Tory policy and philosophy. He probably was not helped by a slip of the tongue as he delivered it.

He said that "tax cuts are very likely to be on offer at the next election". Oops. Not quite as clear as he would have hoped...