The middle classes are fed up with high taxation

Boris’s pledge to cut tax is more than bluster – it is a well-targeted plan to win back support for the Tories

If hope and optimism alone were enough to unite and inspire our divided nation, then Boris Johnson is the man. Unfortunately, things are never quite that simple. Mr Johnson’s potential to fall short in the face of harsh realities is all too obvious. The art of expectation management is to aim low so as to avoid disappointment. Boris doesn’t play that game. Expectations are high, and the chances of failure therefore higher still.

Nonetheless, to those who say the premiership frontrunner is all cheerleading bluster and no substance, there is now a counter. What we are seeing from this peculiarly British version of European populism is the emergence of a surprisingly astute policy agenda.

As with much to do with Mr Johnson, the tax cutting plan he announced this week is not fully thought through and riddled with potential pitfalls, not least in failing to answer how it might be paid for given

the still challenged state of the public finances.

But in terms of its purpose – winning back depleted Conservative Party support – it is remarkably well targeted.

This is not, as has been widely suggested, because it is cynically aimed at benefiting the wealthy pensioners who, as Tory party members, will ultimately choose the next leader.

Yes, they will profit from it, but the appeal is much wider. Mr Johnson plans to raise the threshold at which the higher, 40 per cent rate of income tax becomes payable from £50,000 to £80,000, a considerable tax giveaway worth up to £3,000 a year for the top 10 per cent of incomes.

You would expect the likes of John Mcdonnell, the shadow chancellor, to condemn the plan as tax cuts for the rich. Less easy to understand is the criticism that has come from some of Mr Johnson’s own party colleagues. Contrasting Mr Johnson’s proposals with his own plan to raise the tax threshold for lower earners, Dominic Raab said the Boris proposition played to a “caricature” of Tories as “the party of privilege”. Another one-time leadership rival, Andrea Leadsom, warned that the tax overhaul would fail to get through the Commons even if Mr Johnson succeeds in seizing the Tory crown.

That’s as may be. What their criticisms fail to recognise is the change in the political landscape and national psyche which Mr Johnson’s tax plans tap into. We’ve now had nearly 10 years of “austerity”, and people are fed up with it. Contrary to much of the prevailing narrative, much of this fiscal squeeze has been borne not by the poor, or indeed by middle income earners, but by the top 10 per cent, and particularly the top 5 per cent.

This seemed reasonable enough in the immediate aftermath of the banking bust; it was right that those “with the broadest shoulders” should make the biggest sacrifices. Indeed, the attack on middle-class incomes launched by David Cameron and George Osborne was quite deliberate. It was an attempt to counter the inevitable cries of outrage over spending cuts seen as unfairly hitting middle- and low-income earners. Child allowances for higher earners were axed, and pension tax breaks curtailed. More and more people were sucked into higher income tax brackets, with the number paying the 40 per cent rate rising from 2.5 million at the turn of the century to 4.3 million today.

Mr Johnson’s plan goes some way to restoring the status quo ante. It also addresses the illusion at the heart of much statistical analysis. That 10 per cent of incomes incur the higher rate of tax gives the impression of a small and narrow elite, insulated from the great hinterland of the population, in which median pay is a “mere” £28,677 per annum. This is very far from the case.

When entering the workforce, the vast bulk of people start on low earnings, but their wages will usually rise over time as they become more valuable to their employers, generally reaching a peak in their mid-forties to mid-fifties.

Paradoxically, however, we tend to find ourselves less well off as we approach middle age. This is because many of us acquire expensive young families, causing our outgoings to rise precipitously; we feel poorer and more financially stretched. It is only once children have flown the nest that relative financial comfort is restored.

In any case, under no definition is a single income household of £80,000 a year, with two kids and a mortgage, rich. And yet it is these people, the backbone of middle-class Britain, its values and its economy, who have had their pockets felt most in recent years by a tax hungry Treasury.

Incomes of this size may be only 10 per cent of the distribution at any one time, but much larger numbers will have experienced such earnings at some stage in their lives. Mr Johnson aims to reverse the injustice of the growing numbers caught by higher tax bands. To the amazement of politicians who think the only fair way of proceeding is to redistribute earnings down to the lowest common denominator, it might even prove popular.