TIME TO SPIKE THE TAX HIKE

DAILY MAIL, JANUARY 22

LAST Saturday, the Daily Mail’s front page called on the Government to stop its controversial national insurance rise. Our demand was swiftly supported by MPs, business leaders and Britain’s top economic think-tank.

Yesterday, after the issue had driven the political news agenda all week and ministers were said to be ‘wobbling’ over the plans, Radio 4’s Today programme presenter Nick Robinson highlighted how ‘the Mail had led the calls to spike the tax hike’.

Within 24 hours of the start of our campaign, a former Tory Cabinet minister wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that the Government ‘should postpone the hike’. On Monday, the lead editorial in The Times said: ‘The tax burden is now set to reach its highest level since the days of the Attlee government.’

By Tuesday, The Daily Telegraph was calling the tax rise ‘indefensible’ and the influential blog ConservativeHome said Tory MPs were warning that their party’s support ‘will evaporate unless the rise is abandoned’.

Yesterday, The Sun demanded a ‘U-turn’, saying the tax rise was ‘so obviously a mistake and without justification’. And the Right-leaning Spectator magazine today says: ‘Cancelling the National Insurance rise would be a sign that Boris Johnson can return his government to the lower-tax Conservative agenda on which it stood for election.’

All yet more proof that the Daily Mail is the nation’s agenda-setting, must-read newspaper.