Friday, December 08, 2006

Brown isn't even a browny green

According to a report in this morning's Times, Nicholas Stern yesterday left the Treasury after being "frozen out of Brown's inner circle". It's also being reported that the small, and in my opinion blunt measures, that Brown did in relationship to the environment only came about after great persuasion from his inner circle colleagues.

Essentially it appears that Brown doesn't want to raise taxes so visibly as green taxes would imply. Sadly it's too late to try and hide tax rises now though, given we've been witnessing them year on year since 1997.

There is another implication here as well. Brown's apparent resistance to the green taxes with no other solutions suggests he lacks the ability to think past taxes as the means for changing behaviour. It looks like, for Brown, if he can't raise a tax he doesn't know what to do.

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