Gordon Brown's manifesto

摘要

"Was it possible that they could swallow that?" wondered Winston Smith, the hero of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four", after a particularly egregious bit of governmental spin. Similarly incredulous thoughts are probably going through the minds of those in Downing Street and the Treasury after Gordon Brown's sixth budget. Actually, Britain's voters have been asked to swallow two things. The easier one to get down, maybe, is the brazen claim that the government has not broken any promises in this budget. In spirit, it has. In its manifestos for the 1997 and 2001 elections, Labour promised not to raise income tax. Mr Brown now says he will put an extra percentage point on National Insurance Contributions-a curious remnant of an old state-run social-insurance system, levied along with income tax on people's pay packets.