After months of flirting, Oliver Letwin has finally made his move and promised the electorate a modest tax cut if it will only vote Conservative at the next general election.
The shadow chancellor told the Financial Times that "as things stand at the moment" he will be announcing plans to make some sort of "limited and restrained tax cuts" in the next few months.
"I expect that we will have statements to make about … a specific or more than one specific tax pledge that we will fulfil in the first in the first budget," he said.
This rather half-hearted promise comes after months of umming and aahing about tax, in which Mr Letwin has shown a marked reluctance to make any sort of commitment.
He prefers instead to issue endless consultation documents while the Tories' "wastebuster", David James, gets on with the job of identifying £30bn worth of government fat ready to be shed.
It appears that Mr Letwin was scarred by his experiences in the last general election campaign when his off-the-record speculation to the FT that tax could be cut by £20bn a year backfired spectacularly.
He was forced into hiding in his vast Dorset constituency while the Labour party ran with the accusation that the Tories would slash public services. It will be interesting to see what he promises this time.
