Fear of being seen as party of the rich warps Tory policy on home ownership

摘要

We all know what the Budget did for residential property owners (correct answer: not much) but it's worth understanding the politics behind some of Philip Hammond's decisions to gauge what's likely to happen in the future. This is important because what's blindingly obvious is not guaranteed. Take the most egregious example. In 2014, George Osborne decided to meddle with stamp duty. Initially changing from a slab calculation to a slice was welcomed and made sense. He announced that the measure would be a tax cut of nearly a billion.