"16p basic rate, scrapping Labour's wasted spending, use the savings to take the poorest out of income tax altogether." 20 words, ish.
I think if shadow ministers could bang on that in interviews as a response, it might help. At the moment, they're articulating vague tax cut proposals, which can be made to sound like Tory-lite.
At the moment, they're having to get two or three questions into interviews to get to that point, when fighting past "Doesn't that make you like CallMeDave?" and "Isn't this the reverse of what you stand for?" when "Help the poor" is one of the core things the Lib Dems do stand for, IMO. A consistent message of "taking the poorest out of income tax altogether" in response to allegations of right-wing tax cuts could and should cut past that - "Isn't this the reverse of what the Lib Dems stood for?" "No, Mr Bumblebee, the Lib Dems have always stood for helping the poor, and that's what these proposals do." not "No, Mr Bumblebee, we wanted to raise taxes when they were too low, but now they're too high, so we want to cut them, and give that money back from the bottom up." I hate the phrase "from the bottom up", by the way - I think I heard Nick using it on the Today programme this morning.
You can substitute other words for "poor" - disadvantaged, vulnerable, whatever. But I think the "too low/too high/just right" Goldilocks talk is just too waffly. Like this comment.
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I think if shadow ministers could bang on that in interviews as a response, it might help. At the moment, they're articulating vague tax cut proposals, which can be made to sound like Tory-lite.
At the moment, they're having to get two or three questions into interviews to get to that point, when fighting past "Doesn't that make you like CallMeDave?" and "Isn't this the reverse of what you stand for?" when "Help the poor" is one of the core things the Lib Dems do stand for, IMO. A consistent message of "taking the poorest out of income tax altogether" in response to allegations of right-wing tax cuts could and should cut past that - "Isn't this the reverse of what the Lib Dems stood for?" "No, Mr Bumblebee, the Lib Dems have always stood for helping the poor, and that's what these proposals do." not "No, Mr Bumblebee, we wanted to raise taxes when they were too low, but now they're too high, so we want to cut them, and give that money back from the bottom up." I hate the phrase "from the bottom up", by the way - I think I heard Nick using it on the Today programme this morning.
You can substitute other words for "poor" - disadvantaged, vulnerable, whatever. But I think the "too low/too high/just right" Goldilocks talk is just too waffly. Like this comment.