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Category: Coalition

The coalition and families with children - a taxing issue?

Gavin Kelly

This blog originally appeared on the New Statesman

Often it takes the deadline of an impending announcement to really expose underlying tensions about the future direction of policy. 

The coalition’s recent sorry saga on childcare policy – breathless briefings about a major expansion in tax-relief meant to herald the coalition’s renewed vitality, followed by an awkward silence and then the inevitable stories about who is to blame for the lack of progress - is a case in point. Never mind what this tells us about the coalition’s aptitude for media management, it also reflects something important about underlying attitudes towards the nature of the tax and benefit system.

There have, of course, always been different objectives in our welfare system with different parties placing varying amounts of weight on them: social insurance or poverty reduction; targeting individuals or households.  

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family

The coalition's woes with women

Gavin Kelly

This blog first appeared on the New Statesman.

If you want to see a fearful expression, talk to senior Coalition members about shifting patterns of support among women voters. Call it a cold-sweat, or a premature onset of mid-term jitters – they are distinctly, indisputably on edge. Which is odd, at least on the face of it, given that the Conservatives – if not their Coalition partners - are currently polling at broadly similar levels of support to the last election. So what explains this onset of nerves?

 

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