And further to my scene setting post (and then going to get the children from school), we come to the high political drama that no-one seems to have especially noticed.
Tonight, around 30 ’Labour rebels’ will join with Conservative and LibDems to ‘revolt’ over the abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax. They will table an amendment and, according to the BBC:
‘if their motion is passed ministers will have to produce proposals to ensure no person was worse off before the Commons would grant the government powers to continue levying income tax.’
In other words, MPs could potentially drag the government, kicking and screaming, towards a significant fiscal stimulus, aimed at those on low incomes.
Just what an increasing number of people have been proposing, in fact.
Blimey.
That, I suggest, could represent a seismic shift, and as important a change to government economic policy as has been brought about by a single commons vote since 1979, even though it won’t bring down the government
It is of course ironic that the amendment might be passed with the support of a Conservative party which has set itself stubbornly in opposition to the whole idea of fiscal stimuli to take us through the recessionary period, and many Conservatives MPs would double up with a spontaneous hernia if they understood what they are actually voting for, as opposed to giving the government a good kicking for messing things up in the first place.
And of course it won’t be quite as simple as that.
If the amendment is passed -and it seems that there’s a very good chance it will be - the detailed negotiations will begin on how to minimise the impact on overall public spending, as the government continues to struggle with its perceived need to satisfy the markets and the self-appointed credit agency industry.
But it will be an important symbolic statement, that 30 Labour MPs, some of them more properly principled than Frank Field (who will no doubt gain the initial headlines) have been able to bring about a significant payout in favour of the poor, at a time of recession when sensible economics demands just that.
At least, it will be a significant symbolic statement if we succeed in making it such.
Oh, and it will also show the Conservatives up for the charlatans that they are.
