Below you can see that yesterday Guido suggested there had been some kind of policy U-turn on Death Taxes by the ventriloquist’s dummy that is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Guido even illustrated it with a big blue U-turn just to drive the point home.

As the sharper readers have pointed out, it was no such thing. In fact it was just essentially a re-presentation of, what Alastair Darling let slip this morning on the Today programme, was an already scheduled raising of the IHT threshold from £300,000 to £350,000. It additionally removed the necessity for spouses to visit a financial advisor for one aspect of estate planning. There was no new tax cut. It was a U-turn in rhetoric only.

Darling and Brown will still be rubbing their hands every time a middle-class, family-home-owner dies, the uninvited smiling guests at the funeral wake to present the bereaved with a tax bill.

Guido apologises for any confusion caused.

Alastair Darling seems to have decided to split the difference between the status quo and the Tory proposals on inheritance tax. A big reversal from last year when he told The Times

“Inheritance tax brings in about £3 billion a year. If you get rid of it, it follows that some other tax has to go up or you have to cut some public spending, on health and education and so on…Ninety per cent of estates don’t pay it, it is paid by 6 per cent, and I don’t think this proposal really has much support across the political spectrum. The Tories and the Liberals have looked at it and backed off from it. It may make for a headline, but I don’t think it makes for a prudent and sensible tax and spend policy.”

Quite a big U-turn by Darling. It is as if he has vicariously brought George Osborne into the “government of all the talents”…