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Hours after the pre-election budget that Rishi Sunak hoped would help launch the Conservative Party’s floundering campaign for a fifth term in government was tabled in the Commons Bear Pit, the Prime Minister I went back inside.
Speaking at a dinner held in London’s medieval Guildhall to mark the 50th anniversary of the Center for Policy Research, the right-wing think tank founded by Margaret Thatcher, Mr Sunak highlighted the government’s achievements and displays of political fervor. praised. is on the rise, delivering a sharp jab at Labor.
Sir Keir Starmer will “use the shocks of the past few years and the need to move to net zero to move to a permanently bigger government,” the Prime Minister claimed. “All of this leads to stagnation, not growth,” he warned.
Never mind that the UK has already suffered a decade of stagnation. The speech caused a storm among Tory supporters, who joined in the standing ovation initiated by the bullish Scottish Minister Alistair Jack.
But not everyone there was happy. A small number of Tory backers involved in the recent failed attempt to remove the leader have ostentatiously failed to stand up. One member of the Conservative Party’s right wing complained: He talks about tax cuts, supply-side reforms and the benefits of Brexit, but none of them have materialized!”
Even MPs with no animosity towards Mr Sunak or Jeremy Hunt were reluctant to see the budget. That’s because its biggest policy, the 2p cut to National Insurance, had been planned for quite some time.
“I’m not overwhelmed or underwhelmed,” joked one backbencher. “If that’s the word, I’m just confused.”
The chancellor’s work on fiscal policy, which will likely be his last before polling day unless he gaffes in the autumn statement just before the October or November elections, has been underway for several months, but the most powerful policy Even that wasn’t finalized until last week.
Mr Hunt’s priority has always been to achieve a 2p cut in either income tax or national insurance, one of the main instruments of personal taxation, because it would seem stingy to cut it by 1p.
About a week before the Budget, he concluded that income tax was unaffordable but national insurance could work, and in a cheeky political ploy to steal Labour’s plans to abolish non-national tax status. This decision was confirmed behind closed doors last Saturday (without a budget proposal). Mr Sunak’s involvement presented a conflict of interest as his wife is a non-Dom (although she currently pays full UK tax on her worldwide income voluntarily).
Government insiders said the Budget had been passed at Westminster and that Labor acknowledged it needed to come up with new policies to fund spending that would have been covered by the dome reforms. I was relieved.
A Downing Street source said: “The market is not responding. We have made massive tax cuts and our totals are positive. And Labor is becoming increasingly unresponsive.”
Conservative strategists were also keen to point out that Labor appeared to be backing individual policies included in the budget, with one saying: “Labour is supporting all of our policies. , we can’t say we’re maxing out our credit cards.”
However, one announcement that Labor does not support at all is its “ambition” to scrap National Insurance payments completely, a decision agreed by Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt in great secrecy, so Downing Not even the city’s main officials knew about it until the day before. has been published.
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has pointed to the pledge as evidence that the Conservatives are less financially reliable than Labor, but Tory insiders say the pledge could be a clear divide in the general election. I hope that it will become. But when will those elections actually take place?
At such a feverish pace in Westminster speculation about a possible general election in May, MPs have been guilty of nitpicking for signs of a possible early vote.
A former minister said: I Earlier this week, he said he was told to “spend all campaign funds by the end of April” and was planning a spring election.
But the next day, he suggested that the election winds had changed and that an election was unlikely to be held until later this year.
“Apparently the campaign managers were told that their contract would be extended because it was set to expire in June, a month after the election,” he said.
When asked why he was asked to spend his campaign funds, he replied: “One of the things that has been really good about Rishi since he took over is he’s brought in a huge amount of money. They’re just going to give us more, so we don’t have to worry about that.”
But while the prime minister may be successful at raising funds, MPs are increasingly doubtful that he will be that effective when it comes to voting.
One backbencher said: I: “Greg Hands used to say that there was never a conversation on the doorstep that couldn’t be improved by bringing up Rishi Sunak.
No one is saying that now. Rishis are just considered weak. The central office wants to use a leaflet with Rishi’s face on it, but if it were up to me, his picture would be the size of a postage stamp. ”
Another backbencher summed up the mood among Tory MPs who fear losing their jobs: “A lot of people are really worried that there will be an election in May.”
A senior parliamentary party official warned that Labor’s lead in the polls showed no signs of shrinking and that it was “a tough time” for the Conservatives.
Others on both sides of the political divide are less convinced the election resulted in a deal. “I think we could end up with a dysfunctional parliament, similar to the 1992 scenario,” the Conservative MP said.
“We saw from Teresa [May] How can you throw away a 20 point lead in 2017? ”
The Labor frontbencher added: “On our canvass returns, half of them said ‘I don’t know’. They are just Conservatives who are embarrassed by the party at the moment.”
Chris Hopkins, a pollster at market research firm Savanta, warned that the cost of living crisis will make it difficult to convince voters of the current government’s ideas.
he said I: “I think there will continue to be a recognition that no matter what the government does, it will not be enough to make everyone feel the way they did before the pandemic.
People don’t think about any issues when they go to vote, but I think this election will be about the cost of living more than anything else. After all, this issue is why we are currently in the position where Labor is leading in the polls. ”