Is that really why the Labour Party raised the upper rate of tax to 50%?

The BBC confidently assert that:

'The last Labour government raised the upper tax band from 40% to 50% in 2010 in response to the recession but the coalition has since cut it to 45%.'

'in response to the recession', really? Not as a naked political gambit then?

The BBC, as always, are happy to do the Labour Party's work for them, in this brown-nosed report on a Neil Kinnock interview. That's the same Neil Kinnock whose enormous EU pension will be taxed at a lower rate than his fellow British citizens, I wonder why he's so pro-EU.