his commitment to test all policy by its impact on the worst off.

. As opposed to the New lab methods of saying you’re helping the worst off, but behind the spin, bringing in NIC raises, regressive stealth taxes, and a despicable Welfare bill. When can we see a non neo-liberal major party?

Or that ultimately progressive move of paying for a cut in bingo taxes by cutting spending on science education.

Much as I despise the Tory Party, there is something to what Alisdair Cameron says in the first comment.

“That Lawsonian approach did not reverse, but instead contributed to, stark increases in poverty and inequality, which Dave is famously against.”

Gosh, my word, I am in awe of your analytical skills there.

Lawson cut corporate taxation, cut capital taxation and raised indirect taxation.

Sweden has lower coprorate taxation than the UK, lower capital taxation than the UK and higher indirect taxation than the UK.

Sweden has less inequality than the UK.

So it’s difficult to see how making the UK tax system more Swedish leads to a rise in inequality really.

Further evidence, if it was needed, that Cameron’s ‘progressive Conservativism’ is rhetorical flim-flam without any intellectual substance.

Alisdair@1: analyses by the IFS show that Labour’s budgets since 1997 have been consistently redistributive. This has helped reduce poverty and prevent inequality rising by as much as it otherwise would. So while I agree that Labour could and should have done a lot better, Labour has made a positive difference in this area. The idea that there is no difference between Labour and the Conservatives in this area does not stack up against the facts.

Tim@4: you mention sales tax, corporation tax and capital taxation but for some reason income tax is missing from your analysis. I suspect that including it would (a) make a nonsense of the claim that Nigel Lawson made the UK tax system more Swedish and (b) help explain – without being a full explanation of – why inequality went up under Thatcher and remains higher in the UK than Sweden.

“(a) make a nonsense of the claim that Nigel Lawson made the UK tax system more Swedish and (b) help explain – without being a full explanation of – why inequality went up under Thatcher and remains higher in the UK than Sweden.”

No, not really. For the great unknown secret of the Sweidsh way of doing things is that their tax system isn’t all that progressive. It’s perhaps a shade less progressive than the UK one actually.

The way the Swedes reduce inequality is through what they spend the money on, not how they raise it.

Sweden: Low taxes on wealth creation, high taxes on personal income and expenditure. It has a classical liberal economy revving away under its beautiful social democratic bonnet. Even viewing it from a libertarian perspective, it is a pretty impressive compromise.

Tim@6: I did not say that the Swedish tax system is all that progressive. I said that your effort to portray Nigel Lawson’s reforms as making the UK tax system ‘more Swedish’ falls down on the fact that your original comparison conveniently ignored income tax (high in Sweden, cut by Nigel Lawson). And I said that high income taxes are part of – I explicitly indicated that they are only part of – the explanation of why Sweden has greater equality. That’s entirely consistent with your spot-on point about the importance of how tax, however raised, is then spent.