Five days into the contest, the candidates to be the next Conservative prime minister have already offered £235 billion in tax cuts. None of them have begun to suggest how they would pay for them. Yet on they go, blithely playing to the gallery of Tory members, making promises that are not far short of one-and-a half-times the National Health Service budget. If anyone needed proof that the Conservative Party has bigger problems than will be solved by removing Boris Johnson, here it is.
The carnival regime of Johnson has shown that Britain needs a serious Conservative Party. Parliamentary democracy only functions if political parties sift the putative leaders and select wisely, not just on their own account but for the good of the nation. In choosing Johnson simply because he promised to get Brexit through Parliament, the Tory party failed in its duty to the country. The early signs in this leadership contest is that it is set to repeat the mistake.
The story so far has been a riot of fiscal irresponsibility. Suella Braverman is contenting herself with the desire to break international law but all the others are planning unaffordable tax cuts. Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid want to reverse Rishi Sunak’s hike in corporation tax. That would mean £30 billion of cuts to public spending. Grant Shapps says he will both follow suit on corporation tax but also, somehow, raise defence spending to three per cent of GDP. Liz Truss has pledged tax cuts on day one. Nadhim Zahawi has promised that corporation and income tax as well as business rates will all fall, and Penny Mordaunt will halve VAT on fuel and raise income tax thresholds. Bad politics leads to worse economics.
These decadent spending pledges are, in a way, all a compliment to Rishi Sunak, the favourite to win and until last week the chancellor — and therefore the man who made the fiscal decisions that define the context. Plenty of Tory MPs are innumerate enough to want tax cuts yesterday and it is a temptation for leadership hopefuls, desperate for something distinctive with which to overtake Sunak, to offer them up. Rishi Sunak might therefore emerge quite quickly as the only grown-up in the room.
In his Mais lecture back in February, Sunak cut an impeccably dry figure when he said “the notion that tax cuts without any spending cuts or substitute source of revenue will so stimulate the economy… is emphatically not part of my thinking. Not my words — those of Nigel Lawson”.
So Sunak might be the only candidate not making stupid promises. He has his own problems, though, which ought to disqualify him from consideration. He was fined by the police for attending a party in 10 Downing Street which broke lockdown rules. This was an indiscretion for which Sunak should have resigned. A serious Conservative Party ought not to be led by someone who has been found to have broken the law while in office.
Then there are Sunak’s own financial affairs. His wife has been forced to forgo her status as a non-domiciled British person, which affords tax advantages on UK income. Mr Sunak himself has hung onto a green card which entitles him to work in the United States, which hardly screams out commitment to Britain. It would hardly come as a surprise if Sunak’s finances involved some complex procedures for an entirely legal avoidance of a major tax bill.
It has been depressing to hear Tom Tugendhat, another would-be leader, declare that he would keep the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill along with the policy of sending refugees to Rwanda — and to hear Jeremy Hunt among others agree. It doesn’t seem that there will be much change to policy, apart from tax cuts. Nobody really offers an intriguing departure in Conservative thinking.
After more than a decade in power, the Tory party has got to the point where the leading candidate and favourite to win is running on the slogan that it is time to restore trust, rebuild the economy and reunite the country. It is a blatant admission that trust has been squandered, that the economy is a mess and that the nation is divided. Just wait until Sunak catches whoever has been in charge these past 12 years.
We have a contest populated by a band of fantasists and a man bearing a police fine. The Conservative Party really does need a break from office.
