Have Reeves and Starmer missed the chance to ditch stealth taxes? | Phillip Inman

Retreat from plans to increase income tax means Labour is unlikely to make system fairer and more coherent

For decades now, whenever the British public has faced the prospect of tax rises, large sections of the electorate - so large they sway most politicians - have made it quite clear, let those increases be by stealth.

It is a message every chancellor since Nigel Lawson has heeded, with just a few honourable exceptions in the intervening decades.