Tag Archives: nick hollinmghurst

The VAT rise: a refresher course for Labour

Today’s increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% — announced in the Coalition’s emergency budget last year — has triggered a fresh burst of opportunism criticism from Labour. The “wrong tax at the wrong time” claims their leader Ed Miliband.

How Labour’s last Chancellor backed a VAT rise

I suspect there’s a Labour MP we won’t be hearing from today, though: Alistair Darling*, Chancellor until the party’s defeat in May. As Mark Pack noted here last July, Mr Darling was a strong advocate of increasing the rate of VAT in order to tackle the UK’s massive deficit, with The …

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Recent Comments

  • David Raw
    "Sorry – not our fault"..... For half a mo' I thought that was a leak of the Party's radical slogan for the next G.E....
  • Peter Davies
    "The Greens’ major objective is to preserve the planet as a liveable space for humanity." I'm not convinced that is still in their top three....
  • Peter Wrigley
    I think it helps to look at the parties in terms of their major objective, or usp if you prefer. The Liberal Democrats' major objective is to preserve, prote...
  • James Hill
    @David Allen There is 0% chance that the result of the next election is a Tory-Lib Dem coalition. And the tax cut proposed by Ed has also been proposed by the t...
  • James Hill
    @Rob Heale The problem with VAT, is generally when rates are lowered, the savings are not passed on to consumers and instead pad out profit margins. This has me...