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What do we think of the council tax plan?

After last year’s dramatic Monday at the Tory conference when George Osborne’s inheritance tax plan helped turned the political narrative on its head there was a degree of expectation when he got up to speak this morning.

Alas the conference is being over-shadowed by the dramatic developments in the financial world and whatever Osborne said it was going to get nothing like the attention of last year.

But from a straight political standpoint the council tax pledge is smart. It’s simple to understand and it deals with a tax that can really grate with voters. His means of funding it sounded plausible and popular – cutting back on government advertising and consultants. The big question is whether this well help his party get the initiative back.

For the Kelly resignation and the Gord gang stories aside Labour has had a pretty good week and a half and there is now a sense that a Tory landslide, which seemed to be almost inevitable, might not now be such a certainty.

One of the problems for the Gord Gang is what they do about the council tax move. Any sense that the are “nicking” the idea could, as we saw last year with IHT, be counter productive.

The post-conference polling is going to be really interesting.

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Mike Smithson