Lib Dems have one killer policy: Set the threshold for Income Tax and National Insurance contributions at £10,000 a year (or roughly minimum wage). It’s so good Labour activists want their party to steal it. I wouldn’t be surprised if similar pressure is being put on David Cameron to do the same, although he won’t (tax cuts are for ‘Same Old Tories’ not modern, Compassionate With Your Money Conservatives)

Now, I’ll be honest, I love this policy for a number of reasons. First, it’s a tax cut, which I like. I’m against anything that punishes people for working or being successful, because working and being successful are actually good things that provide jobs and wealth and in doing that improves our health, increases our free time for leisure and personal pursuits and generally improves our quality of life.

It’s also a tax cut that does something about the problems faced by people moving from benefits into work, where, thanks to tax if you’ve got 2 kids you’re actually better off on benefits than a minimum wage job. That is, unless you’re willing to risk the tax credits system. Its painfully obvious that if you don’t take tax off people in the first place, you don’t need a monolithic, incompetent bureaucracy to then give it back again, wasting money for the sheer hell of it. Redistributing wealth from one group of poor people (those without kids) to another group of poor people is a whole new level of messed up politics, and one that people seem to blindly support.

I also love this policy for the message it sends: Tax Hurts.

Admitting that tax hurts, that tax is a bad thing is a major step forward. We saw a bit of it with the campaign against Council Tax. This was a big one, for me – I realised that increases in Council Tax are a consumptive plague on those on minimum wage, on pensioners and pretty much everyone. There’s nothing a council can do with extra money that would compensate for the damage done to someone on a fixed income having to find another £100 a year.

Income tax is the same. We’re making people at the very bottom of the employment ladder pay £700 a year in income tax. £700!!! That’s not small beans. That’s the difference between being able to get a car through the MOT so staying mobile, or being able to add more fruit to your kids diet, or any of the other things that people might want to do with an extra £58 a month.

One of my little soundbites I used at the Conference was this:

The amount that Labour has increased spending by since 1997 is more than it currently takes in Income Tax. In other words, without the increase in spending, we could be Income Tax Free by this point.

For Lib Dems, this £10k threshold is our best policy. It says that public money should not be wasted, that tax should not be a punishing, economy crippling burden. Good.

The security that this tax money buys for public sector workers makes private sector workers increasingly insecure, increasingly less likely to find work in a rigid, “I’ve got my safe job for life and fat pension, so fuck you” culture. The more Lib Dems can be authentically liberal on the tax issue, the more we stand out as being against those things that keep people poor.

We need more of this. Well, a lot lot more actually… but as far as seeds go, this is a welcome one.