Skipper

Polly Toynbee is often attacked by rightwing people and I confess I too have occasionally found her a bit too much to take, but her articles must be among the best researched in the quality press. Today she addresses taxation; and manages to deflate a few myths about who pays it, about Labour relentlessly pushing it up and Labnour's recent record of handling opposition to specific aspects of it.

Firstly, the number of high earners in the UK is really not that great. 90 per cent pay only the basic rate of income tax and earn less than £22,300. The richest 10% live off the real fat of the land.

Secondly a popular notion is that Gordon Brown, through stealth taxes and other probably underhand means, has racked up taxation to record levels. Not so. As a percentage of earnings, the 'tax take' for 2007-8 is 36.8%; now that's quite a lot but is less than the Conservatives 1996-7 and less than every single year under the tax-cutting Margaret Thatcher.

Thirdly, as a percentage of GDP, tax was 50% in 1976, 49% in 1983 and 44% in 1993. Currently it is around 41-2%.

Polly also emphasises that New Labour has tried to square the impossible circle of US levels of taxation and Swedish levels of public services. She concludes by pointing out that taxes designed to change behaviour will always be unfair and resisted: for example on tobacco, which hits the poorest most keenly; or petrol which hits hauliers and cab drivers. Finally, she suggests that Labour's current practice of caving in to criticisms- 10p tax, 2p fuel tax, inheritance tax, non-doms and who knows what else- is not the way to regain respect from voters who now seem determined to think the worst of them anyway.