Tory attack dog lands killer blows* in married-couple-allowance debate

From The Evening Standard:

David Cameron today put marriage at the heart of his election battle — but failed to say who would benefit from his flagship policy... But Labour claimed the policy would mainly benefit rich married couples where one of the partners stayed at home... Mr Balls claimed the transferable income tax allowance for married couples would cost £4.9 billion and penalise some couples. “You say to the widow, to the single parent You are going to get less, your child is less worthy of support,” he added.

The Tories' spokesman hit straight back:

"Don't be such twats! Do you not realise that although the UK does not have a transferable personal allowance, wealthier couples with a lot of investment income can simply transfer it into the name of the non-working spouse and use up his or her personal allowance and basic rate band that way?

So most rich married couples wouldn't benefit at all! It'll be yer average dad-at-work, mum-at-home-with-kids (I can't be arsed saying 'non-working spouse' all the time, who invents this shit?) family who benefits! And yes, we accept that the wife of a head teacher will benefit just as much as the wife of a postman, but so what? An extra £1,200 a year is worth a damn' sight more to the postman's wife than to the head teacher's. That's the whole rationale for redistribution and welfare - the simple fact that £1 is worth far more to a poor person that to a rich one. You knobs.

Oh, and by the way, don't spout this crap about 'social engineering' and 'all families being worthy of support'. Under your welfare system, the tax and welfare system rewards couples who split up by giving them an extra £10,000 a year. And it's Labour who's telling the widow and the single parent that they'd better bloody well not get married again or they'll take away that £10,000 again.

And on a final note, how the f*** can you cost our policy when we haven't said what it is yet? What we were considering is financing the transferable allowance by reducing the personal allowance slightly for all, so that would be fiscally neutral. That ain't going to affect your council house mum who doesn't go out to work and in fact (if you think about the maths), it would make most rich couples slightly worse off.

See you in Opposition, you suckers!"

Of course no Tory spokesman said any such thing, I just made that all up. Which leads me to believe that the Tories are, yet again, going to throw the election for fear of being in power when it all goes tits up.

* I'm not sure if an attack dog can actually land a blow, but you know what I mean.