From The Metro:
... former minister Jake Berry, leader of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs, warned against a policy that appeared aimed at elderly voters in affluent southern seats [see below].
Tory former Cabinet minister Sir John Redwood warned against a ‘stupid’ tax rise, "A tax on jobs when you want to promote more and better-paid employment is particularly stupid."
Tory former chancellors Lord Hammond, Lord Clarke and Lord Lamont have all criticised the plan to increase National Insurance, while former prime minister Sir John Major said it was ‘regressive’.
I always said the John Major was the only decent PM in my lifetime, in both senses of the word.
From The Times:
In a sign that the tax rise could split Johnson’s electoral coalition, Jake Berry, a former minister who leads the Northern Research Group and is the MP for Rossendale & Darwen, said that the move would disproportionately benefit older voters in affluent southern seats.
“It doesn’t really seem to me reasonable that people who are going to work in my own constituency in east Lancashire, probably on lower wages than many other areas of the country, will pay tax to support people to keep hold of their houses in other parts of the country where house prices may be much higher."
Berry, 42, formerly a close ally of Johnson and a key backer of his leadership ambitions, told Today on BBC Radio 4 that because national insurance was not paid by retired people, a rise would pose questions of intergenerational fairness.
“It doesn’t seem fair to me — particularly following this pandemic where so many people have taken great sacrifices to keep people safe, it’s particularly hit the youngest, particularly hit those in work — that we then ask those in work to pay for people to have protection in care.”
But of course all this logic was ignored and they went ahead anyway.
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