The Zac-Gummer boomerang, thrown in December 2005, has hit Cameron in the face today. The Quality of Life group policy report is overflowing with guff. Take their headline plan to add VAT on short-haul flights. Has it occurred to either of them that VAT is reclaimed by anyone on business trips, so this would only hit the small people on their holidays?
I have to admit sharing Stephen Glover’s revulsion to the sight of a millionaire eco-warrior proposing to tax the poor out of the sky, off the roads and away from the supermarket car park. The finger-wagging piety is the precise reverse of the empowering message of Conservatism. I suspect Cameron has by now grasped how politically dangerous all this is to him. He’s been batting away Zac’s proposals with admirable speed, but today a truckload of them has been dumped over him.
PS Brown has done Cameron a favour meeting Thatcher and bumping this Quality of Life nonsnese down from the news schedule. For a full brief on its shortcomings, read this from the Taxpayers Alliance (pdf)
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