Front page of the Mail on Sunday with the Tory policy announcement on IHT pic.twitter.com/bTbs0LobRj

— TSE (@TSEofPB) April 11, 2015

Front page of the Independent on Sunday with the Lab policy announcement on tax avoidance pic.twitter.com/JYR3DKJPCt

— TSE (@TSEofPB) April 11, 2015

 

Last night saw the the emergence of a major policy announcement by both the Tories and Labour, these can be seen as the appetising hors-d’oeuvre before the main course that is the manifesto launches in the early part of this coming week.

The below graphic from some polling by Ipsos Mori in February, which shows leadership isn’t as important policies, as they note, we’ve gone from the most presidential election in 2010, to the least, which explains why the Tory attacks on Ed Miliband haven’t led to sustained Tory leads this week.

 

So, it comes down to which party has the policy/policies that appeal most to the voters. The Tory plan on IHT is the interesting one, back in 2007, when Labour MPs were publicly saying that “Shortly there will be a [snap] election, in which Labour will increase its majority”

One of the things that stopped Gordon Brown from holding that election was George Osborne’s policy announcement to increase IHT threshold from £300,000 to £1 million which saw a sustained change in the polling in the Tories’ favour.

But that was then, and this is now. The Tories are perceived to be the party of the rich, will this policy reaffirm that, as the cutting of the 50p to 45p in the omnishambles budget of 2012 saw the Tory polling take a dip from which they are only now recovering from.

But finally, we’re moving onto the substantive part of an election campaign, something that will help voters decide which way they will vote and could cause one side or the other to pull away, as fewer voters are decided on how they’ll vote in May than in previous elections.

TSE