Tories have no room for tax cuts despite £52bn a year stealth rise, says IFS

Rishi Sunak speaks to Jeremy Hunt during a Cabinet meeting. On Sunak’s watch, tax revenues as a share of the UK economy are on track to climb to the highest sustained levels since the second world war. Photograph: Simon Dawson/No10 Downing Street

The government has no room for unfunded pre-election tax cuts despite having pushed through a “colossal” £52bn a year stealth raid on household incomes on Rishi Sunak’s watch, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned.

Britain’s foremost economics thinktank said the dire state of the public finances meant that attention-grabbing tax cuts risked stoking inflation, leading to higher Bank of England interest rates and a lengthy recession.