Are the Tories for the left-behind towns, or the wealthy shires? We’ll soon find out | Polly Toynbee

The party faces an unpalatable budget choice: no new spending, raise taxes on the rich, or break its own fiscal rules

Did anyone expect triumphant Tories to take a leaf out of Jeremy Corbyn's defeated manifesto? But there it is, leaked to the Financial Times and the Sunday Telegraph. Plans are (just possibly) afoot to raise fat sums from the rich to spend in the new Tory seats of the north. Yes, even reviving Ed Miliband's 2bn mansion tax. Despite four abysmal election failures, might Labour yet claim significant ownership of radical new tax policies?

You have to pinch yourself to believe the newly radicalised Tories are about to clean up Britain's unjust tax system

Related: Austerity is grinding on - it has cut too deep to 'level up' | John Harris