The heart of the story on 26 November, although emphatically not the whole of the story, should be income tax. Income tax is key to the public finances and to the redistribution of wealth by the state. It will always be the principal embodiment of Oliver Wendell Holmes junior’s totemic dictum that “taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society”. But no chancellor has raised the income tax base rate since Labour’s Denis Healey raised it from 33% to 35% in 1975 (he then cut the rate in 1977 and 1978, but we don’t hear so much about that).