Poll-leading Mitt Romney’s hopes of defeating Barack Obama were written off by many when he attacked the 47% of Americans who don’t pay federal income tax last month. At the time Guido’s own number-crunching revealed that 46% of the British electorate are dependent on the state:

Now a report by the Centre for Policy Studies has found that 53.4% of UK households receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes. That figure has gone up by almost 10% since 2000:

This is why the IDS-Osborne battle is so significant…