Rishi Sunak should have started his campaign offering a 4p cut to income tax, instead of focusing on a Cameronesque finger-wagging ‘stability before tax cuts’ message. His pledge to cut the basic rate of income tax to 16p, unveiled last night, now looks like a panicked U-turn when it is in fact consistent with his long-standing view of politics: that Britain is in danger of turning into a high-tax, high-spend European style social democracy because Tories keep forcing through extra spending without thinking how they’d pay for it.