What tax rises are Labour planning?

The Tory manifesto is ‘a clear plan’ promising ‘bold action’. Rishi Sunak uses the word ‘bold’ three times in two paragraphs. If it were bold, it would not need its 80 pages. Its detail is best seen as a resource for candidates trying to deploy specific promises with specific interest groups. This is a way of shoring up the Tory vote, not of winning the election – a tacit admission of defeat. It may have an eye, too, to what happens afterwards. Labour wants to be able to say that the Conservatives crashed out on the most extreme manifesto ever. Indeed, Sir Keir Starmer is already calling it a Jeremy Corbyn-style document, but from the right. This is untrue. The manifesto is essentially technocratic, as is the party’s leader. It is not wicked or extreme, just rather beside the point.

In each election, a game is played in which Labour and/or the Conservatives try to conceal the taxes they intend to increase.