BOLDNESS is a quality our politicians are desperate to claim as their guiding light, judging from so many of their speeches.

Ed Miliband says Labour has “big ideas to change things”, David Cameron boasts of being “bold and decisive” and Nick Clegg tells us the Liberal Democrats have “bold thinking, big ideas”.

Now, the Coalition has certainly been bold – and Mr Miliband may yet be – but I’m struck by the policy areas where politicians prefer to be timid, to stick to orthodoxy, to avoid provoking the voters.

Here are six that come to mind:

  • Taxes: The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently laid bare how our tax system is a complicated mess – packed with absurdities.

So, council tax is based on property values from the last century and stamp duty can whack a homebuyer with an extra £40,000 bill, just because the house price nudges up.

Now we have the bonkers married couples’ tax allowance – where a couple will be £210 a year worse off, if one of them gets a £1 rise and becomes a higher rate taxpayer.

  • Hospitals: Medical experts agree we need 25 to 30 specialist centres across the country – rather than the all-dancing general hospital in every big town – especially when money is so tight.

But politicians wave placards alongside protestors opposing the loss of their local service, because it is a sure-fire vote-winner.

Sure enough, Labour has promised to give people more power to prevent local hospital closures - and to reverse a law change that gives the health secretary that muscle.

  • Private schools: Our leaders bemoan the lack of “social mobility” and the iron grip a privately-educated elite have on the law, medicine, journalism, business and politics. But Labour will keep the ludicrous charitable status enjoyed by private schools and any attempt to boost state school representation at top universities is condemned as “social engineering”.
     
  • Road congestion: There used to be talk of using new technology to charge motorists on the busiest roads, to tackle everworsening jams – cutting petrol and vehicle taxes in return.

Instead, under the Coalition, driving becomes ever cheaper – at a staggering cost of £20bn-plus in lost fuel tax revenues – while public transport gets more expensive, punishing poor people without cars.

  • Drugs: To be fair, Nick Clegg has criticised the failure of the 40-year ‘war on drugs’ – but the other parties are hell-bent on carrying on with blanket prohibition.

This caution is in marked contrast to the US states which have regulated the marijuana trade and the likes of Portugal, which decriminalised possession and sends addicts to treatment – not jail. Instead, it is left to the likes of Mike Barton – Durham’s chief constable, who called for the decriminalisation of Class A drugs last year - to be bold.

  • Snooping: Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know GCHQ snoops on every Brit using Google and Facebook – exploiting the loophole that they are ‘external communications’ sent abroad.

In the US, such revelations prompted an outcry and promises of change. Here, ministers simply tell us everything done is “legal” – and not to worry. Best not to be too bold.