Tory nerves grow over Sunak’s Budget

How will Rishi Sunak’s Budget land with Tory MPs? As reports circulate in the press that the Chancellor is considering raising corporation tax and capital gains tax as well as bringing in a stealth tax for pensioner savings, nerves are growing among Conservative politicians. 

The Northern Research Group of MPs, chaired by Johnson’s old friend Jake Berry, have called on Sunak not to tax his way out of pandemic debt by raising business taxes in the budget. Tory MPs such as David Davis have warned they could refuse to vote for it if the reports are true.

Meanwhile, former prime minister David Cameron has popped up to say tax rises ‘wouldn’t make any sense at all’, comparing the Covid crisis to a wartime situation. On the other end of the spectrum, former chancellor Philip Hammond has said Sunak ought to tell the public ‘some difficult home truths’ and abandon ‘extravagant’ promises from its 2019 manifesto in order to rebalance the nation’s finances.