On the Tories' opinion poll rating... "Inevitably as you come into an election campaign it’s going to be tough and you have a fight on your hands. For years the Conservative Party was stuck on 32%. As of this morning we’re on 40%." The Conservative leader emphasises council tax, inheritance tax and long-term care when asked for practical reasons to vote Conservative... "We will freeze council tax for two years. The council tax has bled British families dry. It has doubled in most places, no one feels their services are twice as good. Then there is inheritance tax. People do feel that £325,000, the current threshold is too low. The fact is there are two million homes in the country valued above that level and we will take away the threat of inheritance tax for all middle income families, people who have worked hard and put money aside and built up a nice house they want to pass on to their children. On elderly care, if you put aside £8,000, no one will have to sell their home to pay for long-term care." He gives a somewhat contradictory answer on the 50p tax band... " I suspect it will raise a little bit of money, although less than people forecast. We can’t make an early pledge to get rid of it but we don’t think it’s a sensible move. Look at the evidence of the 1980s. I want the rich to pay more taxes. The way we got the rich to pay more taxes is we cut the top rate of tax. The remarkable thing about the move to 40% was that it didn’t just mean the rich paid more in income tax, they actually paid a larger percentage of the total income tax take." On protecting householders from intruders... "We’d like to see a threshold that says any force that isn’t grossly disproportionate may be used. In that way, you are effectively saying that if a burglar enters your house, he is leaving his rights at the door. People need to have the certainty that, unless it’s grossly disproportionate, that the police and the courts are not going to come anywhere near them. When you’ve been burgled, it feels like your whole house has been invaded, your privacy has been invaded, you feel very nervous for weeks on end. This is your space, your place. It’s not a level playing field, it’s my house. If someone comes into it, that’s it, they literally leave their rights at the door. That’s how I feel about it and I think the law should reflect it." Read the full interview in The Express. Tim MontgomerieWednesday, February 10, 2010
Cameron says "Never" to the Euro
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Wednesday, 10 February 2010
David Cameron is interviewed by The Express' political team this morning. Here are a few highlights:
Never to the Euro... "I was in the Treasury when we were in the Exchange Rate mechanism, and I said to myself: “Never again should we give up control of our domestic interest rates.” If I am Prime Minister and for as long as I would be Prime Minister, I would never take Britain into the euro, full stop, end of story. We should never have got ourselves into the financial mess that we are in but at least we have the flexibility of our own currency and our own interest rates."
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