I think you’ll find that David Cameron will personally raise public funds by opening a scale model of Margaret Thatcher’s heart in Salisbury that people can be shrunk into by the magic of D-Cam’s swollen mind and then ejected directly into Norman Tebbit’s gut to experience true bile before being ushered into a voting booth. He is charging 250,000 per trip but no coloureds or Jews are allowed.

CCHQ has yet to deny this, thus it must be true.

CCHQ has yet to deny this, thus it must be true.

I think that if the last few years has proven anything it’s that explicitly ruling something out doesn’t necessarily prove it won’t actually become government policy either.

On the tombstone death tax, if Labour can rule it out, why didn’t they? Legitimate target.

I’m sorry, pardon? It is legitimate to pretend that anything the government hasn’t explicitly ruled out is actual government policy? Incredible.

On the tombstone death tax, if Labour can rule it out, why didn’t they? Legitimate target.

“If any more evidence were needed that Labour are determined to mount an utterly negative election campaign drive by fear, in which truth is sacrificed at the alter of perceived political expediency then one need look no further than their new poster campaign:”

A misleading, utterly negative campaign poster trying to scare people? I think a poster with a massive gravestone claiming as a policy something which has only been mentioned as one of several options in a green paper seems to fulfil that pretty damn well.

Doesn’t sound like boo hoo to me…

Weren’t the Tories yesterday crying about negative campaigning?

Were they? I thought it was Labour that were complaining about Tory negative campaigning. Just goes to show something…

I know people can be partisan but the level of hypocrisy here are breathtaking. Has any other Tory dismissed this campaign?

After all, it’s factually misleading – for a start not everyone pays IHT, and anyway Labour are categorically denying that they are imposing a new IHT levy.

No they’re not – didn’t you see Brown turn down three (count ‘em) opportunities to ‘categorically deny’ this today? It’s a Green Paper option that Labour are actively considering.

It’s also an absolute gift to the Tories. Because if Labour do now confirm that they propose a compulsory levy of £20k then they’ll be lumped with a policy that’s electoral kryptonite. And if they row back on it – after Brown explicitly did not at PMQs – it’ll be a U-turn and a shambles and all the rest of it. Why Brown didn’t just use the Burnham ‘it’s not our preferred option at this stage’ is a mystery. The man is just so useless…

“If Labour is going to have a chance of attracting the aspirational vote, it should scrap IHT altogether, perhaps as a quid pro quo for increased Income or Value Added Tax.”

Mmhmm – take more money which millions of people on low and middle incomes have worked hard to earn, so wealthy people can get more cash which they haven’t worked for. I thought “aspiration” was meant to be about rewarding hard work?

They don’t even want to pretend to be honest sometimes…

Good point.

After all, it’s factually misleading – for a start not everyone pays IHT, and anyway Labour are categorically denying that they are imposing a new IHT levy.

With the abject failure of the airbrushed “We Can’t Go On Like This” poster campaign, one has to wonder if the Tories have made a terrible mistake.

Proposing tax breaks for the richest 3% of estates in a time of fiscal tightening is surely unwise – and if this spoof campaign goes viral like the last one, then the Tories’ inheritance tax plans are going to be put under repeated public scrutiny. And that won’t serve them well.

The promise of tax breaks for the richest 12,000 estates may have gone down well in 2007 – but this is 2010. Three years is a very long time in politics.

http://dizzythinks.net/2010/02/tale-of-two-posters.html