Rishi Sunak’s plea for one more chance is falling on deaf ears. Emily Hohler reports
Unveiling the Conservatives’ election manifesto at Silverstone on Tuesday, Rishi Sunak wanted to send a “clear message to British voters”, says Stefan Boscia on Politico: “Give us one more chance, and we’ll slash your taxes.” He promised to take another 2p off employee national insurance by April 2027 (his third reduction to NI in a year), to abolish the main rate of self-employed NI completely by the end of the parliament, a cut worth £2.6bn, and to introduce a “triple lock plus” for pensioners.
There were dozens of other pledges in the 76-page manifesto, many of which had already been announced, says Alex Forsyth on the BBC. These include mandatory national service for 18-year-olds, 100,000 funded apprenticeships for young people paid for by scrapping “Mickey Mouse”’ degrees, and increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. All in all, there were nearly £20bn worth of tax and spending announcements.
But while they may be individually popular with voters, Labour’s poll lead has “remained stubbornly north of 20 points”, says The Times. Doubts have been raised whether the pledges are affordable. Sunak insists that his manifesto is fully costed, underwritten by savings of £12bn from welfare reform, £6bn from “clamping down” on tax avoidance and evasion, and a further £5.1bn from “quango efficiencies” and shrinking the civil service. However, both the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies questioned the figures and said that shaving £12bn a year off the welfare bill in the timescale simply wasn’t achievable.
Higher taxes, lower growth
The tax burden will continue to rise, albeit at a slower rate, to hit its “highest level since 1950 by the end of the next parliament”, says Kate Andrews in The Spectator. Freezes to tax thresholds are so effective at dragging more people into paying more tax that the tax burden is set to rise from 36.5% of GDP to 36.7% by 2028-29. Ask the Tories (or Labour) how they might be “more generous in the future”, and their answer is growth.
On this front, both parties “got a rude awakening” on Wednesday, when the Office for National Statistics revealed that
