It's the car tax, stupid
Updated on 02 July 2008
Inside the morning meeting
The economy - and in particular, whether the government can balance both the books and the opinion polls - leads today's discussion.
The finance bill is up for debate in the Commons, which means increased pressure on the government to scrap unpopular changes to vehicle excise duty (car tax).
Big rises are due to kick in next year for heavily polluting cars bought since 2001. This is supposed to help the environment, but the retrospective element - punishing people for purchases made years ago - is attracting the brunt of the criticism.
"Brown's saying we'll sort it, Darling saying we'll look at it," says a programme editor. "The context is, Darling's running out of money."
Borrowing has already been increased to the tune of £2.7bn this year to pay for 10p tax compensation, and any further tax cuts will back the government even further up against the fiscal wall.
"The question is whether they're in the same position Lamont was in the early nineties - a recession but had to put taxes up, because of the state of the public finances," says an editor.
To keep it human, how do we find people with these old cars?
It's a primarily a story about Labour and tax, but the opposition position is worth a mention. The Conservatives say the tax rises are unacceptable.
Tory leader David Cameron recently gave a speech saying we couldn't afford not to go green, but he was light on the detail of how this would be done.
"This is the man who cycles - or at least, used to cycle..."
"The slightly more sophisticated argument," points out one of our economics experts, "is that oil prices are doing all the work for you, why push this as well?"
More bad news elsewhere in the economy: with M&S, who we are interviewing this morning, announcing a drop in sales.
Starbucks has made big cuts in the States, jobs are going in the car industry and the future of house-building companies is looking increasingly shaky, as falling house prices push down the value of their land banks.
All of which puts the row over car tax into context.
"Was this an ill thought-out measure, or if the government was 20 points ahead in the polls and the economy was fine, would it just pass without attracting all this attention?"
It's virtually impossible to work out where one starts and the other ends - though we will try our best at 7pm tonight.
