We're UKIP, we don't read the papers

In directing withering scorn at political blogs, Richard North does us a service by pointing us to ConservativeHome.com, not our usual sort of reading.

This tells us that

According to reports in The Times and Guardian the Tory-aligned Bow Group is proposing a 1% annual levy on the value of all homes to replace four existing taxes - council tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax on house sales and the BBC's licence fee.

The Bow Group's Mark Wadsworth's 'progressive' proposal would see the first £70,000 of a house's value go untaxed. Thereafter the 1% annual levy would kick in. The average homeowner in the north would pay £509. This is based on the £129,000 price tag for the average northern home. With average house prices in London at £307,000, however, the average London homeowner would pay nearly five times as much - £2,370pa.

And what of the prices of houses in London's outer suburbs?

It's hard off hand to think of a better way to antagonise the core Tory vote. Council tax is already a problem for the asset-rich income-poor, such as many pensioners. This bizarre proposal would merely worsen this conundrum.

It's hard to believe that this suggestion will be around for long, so UKIP needs to pounce and oppose it. But UKIP's centre is not nimble.

While this blog was digesting its visit to a UKIP leadership hustings, Richard North was picking up a story in The Independent on Sunday about the scale of VAT fraud.

This type of story is supposedly UKIP's special subject, but it seems no one in UKIP troubles themselves to read the weekend press or stirs themselves to write anything up.

It would be some small comfort to think that UKIP failed this weekend because the puppetmaster was bobbing gently in his boat off the Cornish coast rather than troubling himself with the leadership hustings. But it's par for the course.