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For a time, it had seemed likely that voters’ patience would be exhausted before the Prime Minister went back to the country. But while many remain sceptical about whether they are seeing the promised “bang for their billions”, most seem ready to allow Labour’s great tax-and-spend experiment to carry on for another four or five years.

Secondly, the Chancellor’s relentless expansion of his web of tax credits means that large parts of the population are increasingly hooked on what are, however they are labelled, means-tested benefits. The consequences of this damaging addiction is that more and more people have a financial stake in Mr Brown’s “Big Government” model of the state, while the resulting high marginal rates of effective tax have a malign impact on work incentives.

Finally, a far more curious explanation is the Conservatives’ willingness to allow this to persist unchallenged. Bizarrely, the Tories, whose Shadow Chancellor is Oliver Letwin, have declared what amounts to a virtual non-aggression pact with the Government on the tax-and-spend issue. Their strategy is to fight Labour on its own territory, confining the fiscal fight between the parties to a silly scrap over their proposal for a derisory £4 billion tax cut — less than 1 per cent of total taxation.

The consequence of this is that both sides spend most of their time exaggerating the almost non-existent differences between their economic platforms in an insult to the electorate’s intelligence. It is almost as if when the Conservatives say “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”, they are addressing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Mr Flight, meanwhile, is ruthlessly dispatched for daring to suggest there might be more at stake. Although this may be understandable in the brutal realpolitik terms of an election campaign, it is a depressing reflection on the terms of intellectual debate in Britain today.

But might the tide on tax be about to turn?

In Eastern Europe, a new wave of revolutions is taking place — this time of a fiscal variety. Earlier this month, Poland became the ninth country in the former Communist bloc to adopt a so-called “flat tax”. Once, this idea was the theoretical preserve of right-wing US think-tanks. Now it is a reality for millions as Eastern Europe becomes a fiscal laboratory for the world.

The concept of a flat tax is simple. All forms of income by companies or individuals are taxed once, at a single low rate, usually about 20 to 25 per cent. Generally, there is also a big personal allowance so that the poor pay nothing. All other thresholds and allowances are scrapped in a massive simplification of the process.

Many of the potential advantages are clear. Distortions are removed, disincentives eradicated, complexity swept away, double taxation of savings eliminated and compliance costs cut. And in economies in which a flat tax has been tried, this has helped to pave the way for much faster growth. Most theoretical studies, such as work by Robert Barro, the Nobel prize-winning economist, show that higher taxes spell weaker growth.

The move to flat tax in Eastern Europe has thrown down the gauntlet to Western European governments, which confront the risk that jobs and investment will gravitate to more attractive, low-tax competitors.

Even advocates of flat tax concede that, so far, it has generally been attempted only in smaller economies in a state of transition, just as in Eastern Europe. Trying such a move in a big, developed economy such as the UK would be immensely challenging. Politicians, however, are supposed to be in the business of radical change.

Still, if ideas like the flat tax are thought too scary to offer to a skittish electorate, there are plenty of less daunting alternatives. As Mr Martin argues in his pamphlet, the tax regime could be drastically simplified even within the bounds of the existing, progressive framework of bands and allowances. In the US, President Bush has thrust such fundamental reform to the top of the national agenda. Britain deserves an energetic debate on its fiscal future. Instead, we are offered only shallow populism, a sterile pretence of politics, and a vacuum where the ideas should be.

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