Are we beginning to smell the scent of desperation among the other more distasteful odours lingering above the government benches in Westminster?

A couple of days ago we saw a bizarre Tory attempt to tell people that they've actually had a pay rise over the past year despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Now they are clinging limply to the claim that there's no justification for putting up income tax on the rich, with the argument being that it's not worth it.

Reintroducing a 50 per cent rate of tax on those earning over £150,000 would only raise £100 million, they tell us. So what's the point, old boy?

Which begs the question, if there's so little in it, why did they put it down to 45 per cent in the first place?

Now, far be it from the Morning Star to question the statistical intelligence of this millionaire government, schooled at great cost to their parents who no doubt are now proud of the Establishment status that this has bought them, but it wouldn't be the first time they'd got it wrong.

This is, after all, the same "superior" educated lot who gave us the "54 per cent of teenage girls in poor areas get pregnant" cock-up.

In that case a decimal point had been left out. True figure? Five point four per cent.

Could it be that the dastardly decimal point has slipped through their fingers again?

For what else can explain the discrepancy between shadow chancellor Ed Balls's claim that the true price of the top-rate tax cut is £10 billion - some way off £100m.

Tax expert Richard Murphy says that his own figures show the cost to be around £6bn, although he acknowledges that the Labour figures are based on more recent statistics.

This welcome focus on income distribution couldn't come soon enough.

The number of individuals in the £150,000-plus income bracket, taking into account earnings and investments, was 269,000 according to the most recent available HMRC figures.

That's the top 0.86 per cent of every one of us who declares a taxable income.

Three-quarters of us were on £30,000 or less.

Those who own much of our media, and many of the people who write in it, have a huge stake in trying to paint the prospect of a tax rise on high earners as some existential threat to our way of life.

The truth is that it's a mere dent in theirs.

These people have convinced themselves that they've got every right to their wealth and shouldn't contribute more back into the society that has enriched them than those of us with less cash.

But many of them have made their money on the backs of others, who they have kept on low pay in order to enrich themselves.

Many of them benefit from stealing from the rest of us via tax-dodging, both personally and via corporations that enrich them through their City investments. Many will work in the finance sector that brought Britain to its knees.

So it's good that Labour reminds us that these 269,000 people don't have a divine right to pillage from our society.

But there's a fly in the ointment, as with so much that the opposition does.

Why does Balls, after making a convincing case for a fairer taxation system, then back down to say it will only last for a few years?

If he doesn't have the courage of his convictions, then perhaps the esteemed shadow chancellor should step aside in favour of someone who does.