Day 2361: How not to launch a policy (part deux)

Tuesday:


Last week, Mr James told us how we'd made a mess of announcing our new Liberal housing policy.

Well, let us see what we can do with our latest tax proposals…

The Liberal Democrat Tax commission has had another think and come up with some MORE interesting ideas for liberating people from the burden of TAX.

We can give LOADS more people the opportunity to create wealth by reducing the burden of Income Tax, and we can fund this by closing some of the LOOPHOLES that so-called "prudent" Mr Frown has set up for gazillionaires to buy houses though offshore trusts so they don't pay UK taxes.

So how does Mr Power Cable try to sell this when he's on the radio this morning?

"It's just not fair that these rich people don't pay tax."

Oh, Mr Power Cable! Way to sound like Mr Whinger!

Of COURSE it's not fair – that is why it is FAIR GAME for us to say that we should take away tax perks from the very rich few in order to reduce the tax burden for the not so well off rest of us. But there is no need to pitch it like squeezing the rich is the AIM of the policy.

We should be selling this as a GREAT OPPORTUNITY for EVERYONE, we can CUT YOUR TAXES – and don't worry: we’re doing it in a way that is fair to everyone, unlike Mr Frown who cuts taxes by raising them for the worst off or Mr Balloon who cuts taxes by… well actually he promises not to, if you can believe him.

Go back to your calculator and work out some figures – how much money does closing these loopholes raise? How much can we raise the basic allowance by with that money? How much does that mean IN THE POCKET of the average family?

If you can raise more than £6 billion from ending these perks, then that's more than a penny off the basic rate of income tax. And we ought to say so!

He should have had a better answer: "Of course we are not against wealth creation; we just want to give the opportunity to a lot MORE people. Think of all the wealth THAT would create!"