As the budget approaches, expect more balderdash and hogwash from Labour’s enemies and their foghorn media. Listen to them protest that raising employers’ national insurance would betray the manifesto, making Labour’s pre-election pledge not to put up taxes on working people a blatant lie. But was it?

Labour never said where new taxes would fall, only where they wouldn’t. The manifesto said: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase national insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of income tax, or VAT.”

There are two types of class 1 national insurance – one paid by employees and the other by their employers. Labour’s rumoured plans are only for the latter. Most would assume “working people” are not the same as bosses; employees not the same as employers.

Two mighty arbiters of all things economic have taken opposite views. The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ director, Paul Johnson, told Times Radio: “It seems to me that [raising employers’ national insurance] would be a straightforward breach of a manifesto commitment”, because the pledge not to raise national insurance “doesn’t specify employee national insurance”. IFS research suggests that employers tend to pass on the costs to their workers in the form of lower wages.

But the Resolution Foundation’s interim chief executive, Mike Brewer, says: “The fact is, levying employer national insurance on pension contributions, or even raising employer national insurance rates, do not break the letter of the manifesto. Far more importantly, the government has a £40bn hole to fill in terms........

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