Daily catch-up: Tory plan to tax the floating voter

Cuts to tax credits are similar to the poll tax 28 years ago. Plus the reason God invented suburbs

Poll tax riot, London, 1990

One of the articles of which I was most proud of writing at the New Statesman was one in April 1987 headed "Tory Plan to Tax the Floating Voter". The poll tax was hardly an issue at the time, or during the election campaign that followed (the election was on 11 June). The policy had been set out in a green paper in 1986, and it was included in the election manifesto, but it is mentioned once in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh's The British General Election of 1987.

Many Conservatives had their doubts about it, but I had spotted some research that looked at the likely winners and losers and was surprised by how stark the evidence was. The hardest hit households would be exactly the C2 social group that had swung most in Margaret Thatcher's direction in 1979 and 1983. When the poll tax was introduced, in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales in 1990, it had a disastrous effect on Conservative support. Six months later Tory MPs, fearful for their seats, got rid of Thatcher because she refused to get rid of the policy.

I was struck, therefore, by some analysis of the swing groups in the 2015 election by the Election Data blog (thanks to Rafael Behr). It finds that the strongest swing from Labour to the Conservatives during the last parliament was among the equivalent of 1987's C2s: aspirational people on lower middle to middle incomes, many of whom will be badly hit by the planned cuts to tax credits.

The author comments:

George Osborne is hurting the precise demographic groups which delivered him victory in May. And guess what? They'll remember, and they will vote.

As I wrote at the weekend, we can see this U-turn coming six weeks off (the Autumn Statement is on 25 November).

• My review of yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions is here. Jeremy Corbyn's defensive technique of reading out emails mean he survived again, but the Prime Minister can still do the new low-energy format better than he can. As Lloyd Evans pointed out in his review, he even restrained himself from saying in reply to Matthew, who thinks the laws of supply and demand for housing in London should be repealed: "You’re the reason God invented suburbs."

• And finally, thanks to Moose Allain ‏for this:

"I was going to do a joke about an aedicule but I think it's a little niche."