To save the day, Gordon, you have to tax the rich

Mandelson, Brown and Darling clearly think that the entire electorate is more credulous than the dimmest of card-scratchers. That's why they believe knocking 2.5 per cent off VAT and doling out a few quid to low-earners will boost the flagging economy. Ah! If we let those proles have a little more take-home dosh they'll take it straight out again to Topshop. Then there are business tax cuts, plus the "Easy, tiger!" cry to the excise men, warning them to lay off cash-strapped small businesses. The Government is claiming all this will whack £20 billion into the economy.

And then there's the 5p tax hike for the high rollers on £150k or more. This last measure is the clincher when it comes to exposing the Government's contempt for the electorate. Obviously - its reasoning goes - dumb Britons will believe that this measure will punish the fat cats who got us into this mess in the first place; they won't notice that it only brings in a fairly piddling extra £2 billion to the Exchequer's coffers.

Well, most Britons do understand this much: that anyone who's earning more than £150k and who wants - perfectly legally - to swerve their taxes does so. You can close loopholes until the EU-subsidised cows come home but the seriously rich will still be seriously comfortable with not paying their taxes. The 5p hike may hit some honest upper professionals who really believe in the social contract but the jackpot winners in the City long since squirrelled their nuts away.

Because that's the problem with our attitude to tax: we might not like to admit it but apart from a scant few decades in the 20th century, Britons have never had any general belief in progressive taxation. Meanwhile, the political parties have either tacitly (Labour and the Lib-Dems) or overtly (New Labour and the Tories) supported the general view that progressive taxation is a monstrous imposition.

The Prime Minister and his Chancellor should stop talking down to us. Raising taxes for the rich and cutting them for the less well-off is a perfectly legitimate way of paying for the things that everyone values: decent schools, hospitals and safety nets for pensioners and those unable to work. The trouble with these tax cuts is that they're aimed at persuading some people to buy consumer goods, while the people who got rich flogging them escape scot-free.

Heavyweights in the House

To the Royal Opera House for a superlative production of Richard Strauss's extreme psychodrama Elektra. What a treat to see a piece of theatre about female psychology, acted by a predominantly female cast, and — despite being composed by a man, and written by a male librettist — with no sense of condescension.

The only dissonant note came when chunky Orest sang to his persecuted sister Elektra, "Your cheeks are hollow", when the truth was that they were decidedly plump. Indeed, the significantly overweight Elektra was trim compared with the
markedly obese Klytemnestra.

Why is it that opera singers remain the only high-earning professionals — apart from Sumo wrestlers — among whom such excessive embonpoint remains de rigueur? There's no real evidence that it helps them to sing any better. Perhaps, given that as a rule the wealthier you are, the thinner you are, the fatties on stage at Covent Garden were only providing us svelte audience with a little Schadenfreude to go with our Sturm und Drang.

Ségo's simply one of the boys

As Laurence Sterne so justly observed, "they order this matter better in France". By which I mean the matter of political ambition.

In ghastly, chauvinist Britain the childishness and vanity of overwheening political ambition are confined to men, but in La Belle France there are absolutely equal opportunities when it comes rampant and useless egotism.

Take the current furore between wannabe Socialist Party leaders Ségolène Royal and Martine Aubry. So far as I can see there's not a fine mist of Chanel No5 to separate them on matters of principle or ideology, yet there they are, slugging it out with bitterness and invective, just like the boys. Formidable!