The recent surge in the Liberal Democrats’ popularity appears to have pre-dated last Thursday’s leaders’ debate. An ICM poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday (i.e. presumably mostly before the debate) showed support up to 27% from 20% in the previous survey over 9-11 April.<\/p>\n
This pick-up probably reflects a favourable response to Wednesday’s manifesto launch and in particular the pledge to raise the personal income tax allowance to £10,000. Tax policies are having a significant influence on voting intentions – the Conservatives had benefited from their opposition to Labour’s planned national insurance rise but their lower-tax mantle has been stolen by the Lib Dems.<\/p>\n
A Tory fight-back strategy, therefore, must aim to undermine the Lib Dems’ claim that most voters will benefit from their tax plans, with the £16.8 billion estimated cost of the higher personal allowance “paid for in full by closing loopholes that unfairly benefit the wealthy and polluters”. The largest offset (£5.5 billion) is from extending Labour’s restriction of pension tax relief to all higher-rate earners, not just those with gross income including pension contributions of more than £150,000. The swingeing rise in air transport taxes (£3.3 billion) will also be widely felt, as will the new levy on bank profits (£2.2 billion), which will be passed on in borrowing \/ saving rates. Small business owners and buy-to-let investors, meanwhile, will be hit by the equalisation of capital gains and income tax rates.<\/p>\n
Earlier posts suggested that less optimistic voter perceptions of the economy would undermine Labour support as the election approached. There is evidence of this effect – both the EU Commission and Nationwide consumer confidence indicators fell in March – but the polls have been dominated by the swing to the Lib Dems. This, however, looks vulnerable to greater scrutiny of the party’s tax plans, as well as a less impressive performance by Mr. Clegg in the remaining debates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The recent surge in the Liberal Democrats’ popularity appears to have pre-dated last Thursday’s leaders’ debate. An ICM poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday (i.e. presumably mostly before the debate) showed support up to 27% from 20% in the previous survey over 9-11 April. This pick-up probably reflects a favourable response to Wednesday’s manifesto launch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money-moves-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5294,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions\/5294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}