“Whether the top rate of income tax is 83%, as it was in the 1970s, or 40%, as it was in the years before 2010, the British people seem to have decided in some mysterious way that 35% of their income is all the government is going to get. And that means, more or less, that 35% of national income (GDP) is all the government can spend unless it wants to pile up debt. If government spending is much above that level, as it is, it will have to fall no matter who is in charge.”