Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to cut £17 billion ($21.7bn) of taxes for working people if re-elected, in a final throw of the dice to overturn polls that put him on course for a heavy defeat in Britain’s July 4 election.
With his Conservative Party consistently about 20 points behind Keir Starmer’s opposition Labour in the polls, Sunak made a new appeal yesterday to what one Conservative legislator described as Britain’s carpenters, bricklayers and electricians, by promising further tax cuts if they give him their vote.
The party manifesto aims to put tax cuts at the heart of the campaign, with Sunak’s team believing that the move will put pressure on Labour, traditionally seen as the party of tax and spend.
Sunak, a 44-year-old former investment banker, acknowledged that people were frustrated with him and his party after 14 years of power, dominated at times by political turmoil and scandal, during which many have struggled to make ends meet.
The twin shocks of the Covid pandemic and energy price spikes have sent consumer prices up 21 per cent in three years, the tax burden has risen to its highest as a share of the economy since just after the Second World War, and failing public services have created a sense of malaise. But Sunak argued that the economy was finally recovering and if re-elected he would cut payroll taxes for workers to reignite economic growth further.
“I’m not blind to the fact that people are frustrated with our party and frustrated with me,” he said at the launch of the Conservatives’ manifesto, setting out its future policy pledges.
Under the plan launched yesterday at the Formula One racetrack Silverstone in central England, where US actor Brad Pitt was filming, Sunak said taxes would be cut by £17.2bn a year by 2029/30.
That will be funded by an annual £12bn cut to welfare spending and £6bn a year of savings by tackling tax avoidance and evasion.
The biggest tax cut – accounting for £10bn of the £17bn reduction planned – is a two-percentage-point cut in the rate of National Insurance paid by employees, which will take effect by April 2027.
As part of the pledges, Sunak said he would help the self-employed by abolishing their main National Insurance rate by the end of the next parliament, a possible boost to 4.3 million people who make up around 13pc of all employment.
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