Rishi Sunak’s government is resembling a coalition of different rightwing factions before this week’s autumn statement, rather than one united Conservative administration.
Those listening to Jeremy Hunt in broadcast interviews on Sunday morning referring to the “enormous challenge that we faced when we came in” to office last year might have been forgiven for thinking he and the prime minister had taken power after a general election.
But what went unsaid is that Britain is on its fifth Conservative prime minister in 13 years and that it was an ill-fated “mini-budget” under Liz Truss’s premiership followed by a market meltdown and Tory rebellion that led to Sunak entering Downing Street.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the architect of that disastrous mini-statement, now clearly feels that the time for wearing sackcloth and ashes is over as he pressed on Sunday for his successor at the Treasury to make significant tax cuts before the election, a drum that Truss and the libertarian right of the party have already been banging ever more loudly.
Other Conservative factions had their own warnings for Wednesday. “Red wall” MPs seeking to increase their chances of survival in constituencies affected by the cost of living crisis are ready to hit the roof if the chancellor uses a fiscal windfall of up to £20bn to deliver an inheritance tax cut for the rich, rather than prioritising ordinary people.
Among the remains of the One Nation tradition in the party, meanwhile, the former cabinet minister Damian Green cautioned against tax cuts – except perhaps for those struggling – as he dismissed the briefings before the autumn statement.
“If you read all the papers this morning, then practically every tax in the country is going to be cut on Wednesday. And I hate to spoil everyone’s day, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he told Times Radio.
While there will be some winners from the autumn statement, it is clear that Hunt will not be able to make everybody on the Conservative benches happy. There is already unease over other Tory faultlines that have emerged in recent weeks.
While centrist Tories might share red wallers’ support for tax cuts for lower-income voters, they have been unnerved by remarks from Lee Anderson, the Conservative deputy chairman, who said the government should “ignore the law” after last week’s supreme court defeat on its Rwanda plans and deport people there anyway.
Green told Times Radio: “We were in danger of moving into territory where we appear to be saying that as a party we were to try and ignore the rule of law, and I do think that the absolute bedrock of a conservative attitude to life is that you want parliamentary democracy, individual freedom and opportunity and a respect for the rule of law.”
With the clock ticking on a general election, and Labour riding about 20 points ahead in the polls, the pressure for Hunt to announce or signal significant tax cuts is constrained not only by economic reality, but also by political divisions with his party.
Add in rifts over basic questions about the rule of law and once again there is a recipe for Conservative internal combustion.
