Is the Labour Party now a tax cutting party?

There’s much interest (obviously) in what George Osborne will reveal in his budget today. Some of the potential details have started to leak out – albeit nothing compared to the previous level we’ve come to expect from an Osborne budget.

To distract everyone from the lack of details, and presumably because he think he’s not getting his message out effectively (it’s the message that’s the problem George, not the delivery) so he’s joined Twitter. It’s not going very well.

Yet despite the fact that Ed Balls can’t usually walk down the street without journalists and Tory MPs asking him what he would do if he were in charge of “the awful mess left by the last Labour government”. And yet before this budget he’s endorsed a more radical suggestion than any that is likely to come from No.11 today.

Cutting the basic rate of income tax.

The proposal – put forward at the weekend in the Telegraph – was couched in all of the usual detail about how Labour would support such a move if the Tories were to propose it, and that cutting VAT would be Labour’s preferred method of stimulating the economy. But the lack of shock from either Left or Right suggested that Labour’s potential future tax cutting ambitions are taken as read. A VAT cut (or at least a reversal of the VAT rise) has been in Labour’s “5 point plan” for some time now.

Of course the true picture is more complex – Labour favours higher taxes (a retention of the 50p rate) for the wealthy, and a Mansion Tax for those living in expensive homes. The idea is clearly to shift the tax burden fundamentally up the wealth scale, and give those on average earnings an opportunity to close the gap. But all of that is the kind of nuance that struggles to be heard today.

Unless Osborne cuts VAT or the basic rate of income tax – two of the most visible taxes to “hard-working families” – then Labour will be the tax-cutting party, and the Tories won’t. Which may prove particularly uncomfortable for George Osborne.