Conservatives missed a trick

THE pundits are convinced the Labour Party will split post-election. Their forecast? That four-fifths will seek to revert to the traditional creed of moderate socialism while the Corbynites will remain hardcore Marxists.

Already most donors have pulled out of supporting Corbyn so that 90 per cent of the money source is the unions. They will stay, chanting the Red Flag. So if 80 per cent of surviving MPs try to form the new Labour Party, there could be a large party with no money and a tiny one that is rolling in it. But any return of a viable Labour opposition is going to take years.

But before Thatcherites charge their glasses, check out the Conservative manifesto. It is a very maxi-tax, maxi-officialdom and maxi-interference document. Not much “Tory” about it. So no change to one of the disasters George Osborne left behind.

That was the savage increases to stamp duty on the more expensive houses for sale. As usual, the mandarins failed to realise that you can raise taxes just so far and then tax revenue actually falls off. Stamp duty used to be a golden egg-laying goose for the Treasury. Now in the upper price ranges it is a dead duck.

We have hundreds of thousands lusting for a home of their own. They cannot afford to buy but could rent a flat in a large converted building. But no developer is going to buy and renovate with stamp duty at such punitive levels. So talk of helping the homeless young remains poppycock.