Rishi Sunak’s change of direction

The Conservative party has always sold itself to voters as the party of low taxation, but it has now pushed taxes higher than any post-war Labour government dared. High spending was the tool the Prime Minister reached for at every turn in the pandemic, leaving Britain with one of the biggest post-Covid bills in Europe. His recovery plan was to part-nationalise care homes, taxing the working poor to protect the assets of the wealthy. Taxes are now heading to a 70-year high. Not Conservatism, it seems, but its inversion.

Rishi Sunak’s Budget this week marks a potential turning point in this narrative. It has not changed the overall fiscal direction — that die was cast when the Prime Minister decided to adopt the ten-year-old Dilnot report subsidising nursing care for the
better-off. But the Office for Budget Responsibility gave the Chancellor more room to manoeuvre, upgrading its forecasts and allowing him to borrow more.