Gordon Brown Opens Pandora's Box

Anatole Kaletsky, The Times:

If Mr Brown's fiscal rules can be ignored so easily this year to accommodate a £2.7 billion tax cut to satisfy Labour backbenchers, why shouldn't they also be ignored to satisfy fuel-tax protesters and pensioners and underpaid public sector workers and bankers demanding bailouts and homeowners struggling with their mortgages and multinational companies threatening to pull out of Britain and farmers complaining about the weather and indeed you and me, since we would all prefer to pay less tax and get more out of government?

In short, this week's U-turn could presage a summer of discontent in which every possible claimant and lobby demands its extra share of taxpayer funds.