It is not whether taxes will go up – but who will pay
Boris Johnson’s social care ‘plan’ may have sparked political infighting, but the real battle will be over how the burden of a higher tax era will be shared, writes Phil Thornton
The news that the tax burden in the UK will rise to its highest-ever sustained level should not in itself be a shock.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the urgent need to refinance the NHS while finding a solution to the social care crisis meant debt or taxes were going to have to rise.
The real surprise is that this takes place under a Conservative administration. The fact that the purported mass rebellion against it by Tory MPs faded shows that the low-tax zealotry of the Thatcher era is no longer dominant.
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