Rishi takes inspiration from Thatcher – with one key difference

There are two Tory conferences simultaneously taking place in Manchester, within the same conference hall and inside the same fringe events. One is attended by elated activists, who are revelling in the December 2019 victory they never got to celebrate at party conference last year. The other is attended by increasingly agitated grass root faithfuls, who are up in arms about their party hiking taxes: especially the National Insurance rise on workers and employers, set to kick in next year.

Unsurprisingly, most ministers are tapping into the mood of the first group. They hail the success of the party on fringe panels and at drinks receptions. Yesterday evening, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg both paid lip service to low taxes: not just the merit of keeping the taxman at bay, but the Conservative party’s reputation for doing so. Not everyone in the audience was convinced. ‘What does it say of our party’, one activist tells me, ‘if the Cabinet thinks this is what ‘low tax’ looks like?’ 
In today’s keynote speech, Rishi Sunak decided to tackle these frustrations within the party head on.