The income tax increase for the highest earners does not mark the end of New Labour, Gordon Brown has insisted. A 50p rate for earnings over £150,000, being brought in from next April, was a key part of Wednesday’s Budget

Mr Brown said that far from being the beginning of the end of New Labour as some critics suggested, it was simply the end of the beginning. The Prime Minister conceded that his Government was in a position where winning the next general election was difficult but that they would take every opportunity in the legislative period remaining to make their mark. He said that they would soon put a bill before Parliament to reopen every mine in the UK and that all ex-miners would have their pay backdated to 1984.

There will also be moves to bring British Telecom, British Gas and British Rail back into public ownership. Mr Brown said that he knew banks where he could now get a very decent interest rate. Ravenscraig, Linwood, Bilston Glen and the Proclaimers will all be rebuilt under Mr Brown’s proposals.

However he denied that the legislation amounted to an attack on the last vestiges of Thatcherism and said there would also be a bill calling for Mrs Thatcher to have a state funeral. Mr Brown said that he was proposing it be held on the last Thursday in May and that a suitable stake had already been erected at the gates of Downing Street.

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