Boris’s leadership rivals have been taking aim at his tax cut for people earning between £50,000 and £80,000 – the middle classes who were key to the most recent period of sustained electoral success for the Tories. For aspiring Tory leaders to attack families earning £50,000 a year as “wealthy” is not a strategy that is going to pay dividends, these are public sector professionals and private sector middle managers, not tycoons. For Labour politicians with short memories going on the attack, Labour’s 2017 manifesto specifically identified those earning under £80,000 a year as “ordinary households”…

In fact, because of George Osborne’s 2013 child benefit reforms, many families earning between £50,000 and £60,000 a year are hit by some of the highest marginal tax rates in the UK tax system and end up paying an effective 60% tax rate as child benefit is rapidly taken away, as the Telegraph’s handy chart above shows. Even the Guardian ran an article just a few months ago bemoaning the “60% tax trap”…

Voters will keep £9.6 billion-a-year more of earnings in their pocket to spend in the wider economy, set against a backdrop of over £26 billion of fiscal headroom. The higher rate of tax was meant to be a tax only on higher earners which caught only 1.7 million voters in 1990/1, it will hit the pockets of 4.3 million voters in the current tax year, on top of the child benefit double whammy. The Tories need to win back the professional classes once Brexit is over, this is a vote winner…