The speculation was prompted by an interview with the Sunday Times, in which the prime minister said cutting the 50p top rate of tax to 45p was an example of the government being prepared to scrap something holding back the economy even if it was politically unpopular. "If people can bring forward arguments about how to maximise the revenue from the top rate of tax, I'm always interested to read them," he added.

As far as I was aware, the tories had previously stated that the 50% tax rate was useless, as the effect was actually to be an incentive to tax avoidance/evasion and it in fact brought in less revenue than when the rate was 45%, yes? I mean, we all heard that, right?

So if that's true, how can the 50% tax rate be a brake on the economy? Surely if you bring in the 45% tax rate and the actual tax revenue goes up, that has in fact taken money out of the economy and therefore to some degree has slowed it down, as there is less money for those being taxed to spend on goods and services, behaviour which causes the economy to grow and jobs to be created etc... Don't the tories always claim a low taxation economy is better? So if they reduce the 50% tax rate to 45% and get in more tax revenue, that's bad, isn't it?

They need to make their minds up.