Straws in the wind

Guido is reporing that Paul Dacre had breakfast with Gordon Brown on Thursday morning and points out the coincidence that the Mail’s leader praised Alistair Darling’s tax and spending plans.

despite the magpie taunts, it would be utterly wrong to deny that some of Alistair Darling's measures deserve support. Yes, he stole the inheritance tax plans from the Tories and his scheme is nowhere near as generous as he would like us to believe.
But it will free countless Britons from a pernicious tax on aspiration, and marks a Rubicon moment for Labour, which has accepted the right of hard-working people to pass on wealth (on which they have already paid tax) to their children.

Meanwhile in this morning’s Guardian Polly Toynbee turns against Gordon Brown,the straw that broke the camels back being the party’s move on inheritence tax.

This was more than a horrible humiliation for the prime minister. This was the week that social democracy ebbed away in England. Those words had already slipped from Labour's lexicon, never spoken by its leaders in public, rarely spoken outside the privacy of Fabian meetings and Celtic parliaments.
And she continues
To give the children of the well-off a £1.4bn inheritance bonus while the children of the poor only got another 48p a week in tax credits is symbolically far worse than that notorious 75p for pensioners. The halfway mark to abolish child poverty by 2010 will be missed by miles. Holding down public sector pay rises to 2% for three years, only half next year's expected private sector increase, will increase inequality. To cut capital gains tax on buy-to-let property, antiques, paintings and jewellery is as shameless as it is dysfunctional.