Is Osborne just a Labour Chancellor in disguise? Top economist says George is hammering the middle classes on pensions, buy-to-lets and stamp duty

Imagine you are a hard-working voter who, like millions of others, put your cross against a Conservative candidate in last May’s General Election.

You backed the winning side of course, so have every right to expect a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Conservative set of economic policies.

You might hope, for example, to be paying a little less tax and to be saving towards retirement. It is the responsible thing to do.

Is George Osborne a Labour Chancellor in disguise? Mark Littlewood asks if he is really a red

Or, you might think, why not invest in a second property, or in a new, nicer home? Yet under this particular ‘Conservative’ Chancellor, such things are easier said than done.

You might even find yourself asking if the Government you voted for is on your side after all, because aspiring middle classes, savers and property owners – all are suffering under George Osborne’s stewardship of the Treasury.

He may well be the least Conservative Tory Chancellor for several generations.

Take tax: we now seem permanently stuck with a top rate of 45p – higher than for almost all of the time of the last Labour Government. 

At the same time there has been apparent indifference to the millions of ordinary people being steadily dragged into the 40p in the pound income tax bracket.

In 1990, only one in 15 workers was caught by this rate. Today, more than one worker in six be pay it. 

A tax designed for the very affluent is becoming the norm for the modestly paid. What is the Conservative Government doing about it?

Then there is the failure to help those saving for old age. The amount you can put into your pension pot without tax has been slashed by more than a factor of six, with the yearly allowance now down to £40,000.

The message and incentives are clear: if you’re doing well, the Government will make it harder, not easier, for you to build up a nest egg.

Osborne is also attacking income from second properties. Tax relief on buy-to-let homes has been slashed for many landlords, meaning that perfectly sensible plans to invest and gain rental income are now unaffordable for many. 

Irrational and arbitrary stamp duty rates already penalise those wishing to live in a standard family home and can hit second home owners especially hard.

If you were thinking of moving to a slightly bigger house, you may well conclude that the Government is simply making it too expensive for you to do so.

Prudent savers, property owners and those seeking to climb the income ladder are precisely the people who helped the Conservatives win the last Election. Precious little thanks they are getting in return.

Is George Osborne following in the footsteps of Labour's Gordon Brown (left) and Alistair Darling (right)?

Nor are they alone in worrying. Concerns about George Osborne and the Treasury extend to even the biggest, most totemic economic matters. 

A Conservative Government should surely be responsible on questions of cuts and spending. 

It should create the opportunities to reduce taxation and allow the private sector – the engine of economic growth – to flourish.

But for all the talk of fiscal responsibility and getting the deficit down, State spending under Osborne remains far too high and our overall national debt is actually increasing.

He might talk about ‘paying down the national debt’, but actually the Government is doing nothing of the sort.

On the contrary, George Osborne has added over half a trillion pounds to the debt in his tenure so far – about £10,000 for every man, woman and child in Britain. 

The bizarre truth is this – that some Labour administrations have shown more hunger for controlling spending.

Denis Healey cut spending by nearly £20billion in real terms in his 1976 budget. 

In contrast, George Osborne claimed in his autumn statement last year that revenue projections were so good that he’d effectively found £23 billion down the back of the sofa.

Did he use this to cut taxes or reduce the deficit? No he used it to perform a rather inelegant U-turn on welfare spending cuts.

Looking back further, there is the Attlee administration, which balanced its budget in 1948. It even ran a surplus in 1949. 

If our public finances can recover so quickly after all-out war, why is it taking over a decade to clean up after a banking crash?

In opposition, Osborne said he wanted a simpler tax system. Yet in office he has presided over our taxation system becoming even more fiendishly complex.

George Osborne, pictured, has added over half a trillion pounds to the debt in his tenure so far

The tax rulebook has grown to over 21,000 pages – several times longer than the complete works of Shakespeare. 

Even if you’re the sort of person who is more than happy to pay the tax you owe, it is increasingly difficult to calculate what your liability is.

Osborne also can’t resist a yet greater role for the state in the labour market. Announcing his plans for a compulsory living wage at the end of his autumn statement may have been a wily move to wrongfoot Labour, but it amounts to bad economics.

On most estimates, it will mean politicians will be setting the wages for over a fifth of private sector employees. 

Why don’t the Conservatives embrace a low-tax, low-spend, deregulatory agenda? 

Isn’t their historical role to try to cut back on the sprawling public sector and to let more people keep more of their own earnings and make more of their own decisions?

Have they lost the confidence to push for a free market, capitalist agenda? With Labour lurching to extremes, they are failing to grasp a real opportunity to radically change Britain. 

Instead, they are allowing themselves to be dragged to the Left.

Yet as Mrs Thatcher showed, controversial and radical policies can reap enormous electoral rewards when they are shown to have worked – however unpopular they first appeared.

Taxes need to be cut not just for low earners but for middle earners and for the successful too. 

Owning your own property, saving for your retirement and improving your own standard of living need to be celebrated and encouraged, not seen as opportunities for the state to bring in more and more in tax revenue.

The Government is intervening more and more, and right across the economy. It could prove the most Socialist Conservative government of our lives.

Enterprising, hard working, aspirational, determined and ambitious voters are unlikely to thank them for being so.