A post I wrote on a now deleted blog, dated 08 May 2008:

I think last week's big losses for Labour in the council elections, mark the end of over a decade of tax rises for the middle classes.

Labour have done great things, but they have mostly paid for it by putting up taxes that have fallen on those that have a middling income (in a variety of ways; 'stealth taxes'?) . We have now come to the end of this process. From hence on the task of government will be to manage this tax take for the benefit of the country.

It is noteworthy that the Conservatives do not promise to make big tax cuts. The big change since the Thatcher and Major years is that people have come to accept that the only way to pay for acceptable public services is through taxation. People want public services and to some extent they are ready to pay for it. But there is a limit - and people are now saying that government are taking enough - the challange now is to spend it wisely.

The battle over the next two years will be about which party has the best ideas for spending the countries tax take. This might well be difficult for Labour. Yes Labour have achieved many things in power - and I would give them the credit for teaching the public that taxation is not all bad - but are they best placed to spend our money efficiently?

If the Conservatives have accepted the need for public services and also accept that good public services means taxation for those on middling income, would they not be the best people to manage this money in the most business like way?

I think Labour might have a difficult time proving that they can do a better job of it.

In a short follow-up post, dated 12 May 2008 I wrote:

I enjoyed the Bagehot column in The Economist this weekend, as it confirms a point that I made in my last post: that political debate has now moved leftwards onto New Labour territory.

In summary; many of the innovations introduced by New Labour are now part of the accepted political landscape. The Conservatives are coming to the political discourse with ideas which are by their very nature 'post' New Labour.

On 28 April 2008, I posted:

Gordon Brown has over the last few years given a lot of help to the groups he considers the 'deserving poor' i.e. parents with children (hard working families) and pensioners. The problem with this is that somebody is going to have to to pay for it- drumrole - hard working people (singles and couples) who don't have children.

At some point this group was always going to get rather upset, why should they get little help but still see so much of their taxes being handed out to people who have chosen to have children?

I think the largesse to this selected groups of people is coming to an end; the 10p tax debacle is evidence of that - next time everybody might be included. Hooray!