The chancellor, George Osborne, is to promise that tomorrow's deficit-busting emergency budget will hit the richest 10% hardest and take 850,000 of the lowest paid out of income tax altogether.
Osborne will announce a £200 tax cut for 20 million basic rate taxpayers in an attempt to show that the toughest budget in a generation is "tough but fair". His aides claim Osborne has consciously learned from the mistaken austerity budgets of the 1980s, which did not do enough to distribute the pain fairly.
