Why the Tories’ tax black hole attack on Labour will backfire

The Conservatives love trying to reduce their estimates for the cost of a Labour government down to a neat per-household figure, which makes it easy for voters to appreciate but comes with the danger that the figure will fall apart on closer examination. That is what happened with Rishi’s Sunak’s claim, made in his ITV two-way debate with Keir Starmer, that Labour is planning tax rises of £2,000 per household. That turned out to be over four years rather than one, as many people might have assumed, and turned out to rely on all kind of assumptions which were made by Conservative party researchers rather than the Treasury officials to whom the Prime Minister tried to attribute the whole exercise.

So what about the Conservatives’ latest claim that Labour’s promise to deny new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea will leave a £4.5