The trouble with Sunak’s new tax promise

Rishi Sunak should have started his campaign offering a 4p cut to the basic rate of income tax instead of going with a Cameronesque finger-wagging ‘stability before tax cuts’ message. His pledge to cut the rate to 16p, unveiled last night, now looks like a panicked U-turn when it is in fact consistent with his long-standing view of politics: that Britain is in danger of turning into a high-tax, high-spend European style social democracy because Tories keep forcing through extra spending without thinking how they’d pay for it. As chancellor, he sought to stand athwart such process by putting up taxes and hoping the pain would force his party to think twice about the extra spending they all wanted. After spending restraint, he’d argue, taxes would fall. So his long-term aim was to lower spending and lower tax. But in the short term, he’d be caricatured as the face of higher tax.