Taxing non-domiciles - The Labour Party's response

In my previous article I included some speculation from Benjamin Brogan in the Mail and from Iain Dale regarding the admitted use of Treasury officials' "analysis" to rubbish the Conservative non-domicile tax proposals. Guido Fawkes has done his bit and produced a fine piece of "attack blogging", do read the whole article but the bits I particularly like are these:

"But the Labour party press release is even more extraordinary:
"Today George Osborne made a £3.5 billion tax commitment. Treasury analysis shows it is impossible for him to raise the money he needs to pay for this commitment from his proposals on residence and domicile. Initial costings by the Treasury show that George Osborne's proposal would raise a maximum of £650m, leaving George Osborne at least £2.9 billion short."
It is a sacking offence for civil servants to engage in party political work. Darling has just press released a confession to a fundamental breach of the Civil Service Code. In reality politicians often pressure civil servants to cross the partisan line, discretely behind closed doors where they would be unlikely to be caught, certainly not with the work press released during the opposition's party conference. Gus O'Donnell, who heads the Civil Service, will not be impressed with this at all."

Personally I doubt that anything will come of this story BUT the news tide is turning in so far as that pressure on Gordon Brown is having an impact and his weak and over-promoted ministers will not be able to stand the weeks of pressure that a general election campaign would bring.