‘Battered’ Brits want to hold Tories to account, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt admits

SURREY, England — Jeremy Hunt, the U.K chancellor, acknowledged that Britain’s voters feel “battered” by the cost-of-living crisis and want to “hold the guys at the top to account” as his own Conservative Party tries to avoid an election wipeout.

“It’s not possible to look at the turbulence of the last four years when we’ve had a once-in-a-century pandemic, we’ve had a 1970s-style energy shock, we had inflation as high as 11 percent and say that we’ve got everything right,” Britain’s top finance minister told POLITICO’s Power Play podcast.

The senior Conservative also conceded that the government had failed to deliver one of its core pledges to end irregular migration routes with its “stop the boats” promise.

Hunt’s candid admission of “a lot of frustration” with the Tory record — made as he battles to save his Godalming and Ash seat from a strong Liberal Democrat advance — goes much further than Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s comments that the party has “not got everything right” as he launched the Tory manifesto on Wednesday.

Speaking to host Anne McElvoy in his marginal Surrey constituency, Hunt said the U.K. election was taking place amid “one of the most difficult backdrops for the incumbent party, just as it is for [U.S.] President Biden or [Germany’s] Chancellor Scholz or President Macron [in France].”

He acknowledged that his own previously safe seat is in danger. “It could be a strong Conservative majority or it could be a seat that falls spectacularly to the Lib Dems,” Hunt said.

Hunt warned that Tory backers tempted to vote for Reform on July 4 risk helping Labour. | Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

Pressed on whether he saw the rise of Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, as a sign that centrist Conservatives are losing credibility, Hunt replied: “I think that Britain has always prided itself on the essential moderation of our politics, but people need to see problems being solved and there is a lot of frustration that, you know, we haven’t yet been able to stop the boats coming over.”

But Hunt warned that Tory backers tempted to vote for Reform on July 4 risk helping Labour. “All that a vote for Reform does is give Labour an even bigger majority,” he said. “And that is a polar opposite of what most reform voters want. So it doesn’t solve any problem to vote Reform.”

Hard-right rise

A wave of wins by hard-right parties in the European parliamentary election have forced early elections in France and rattled centrists.

Hunt, a centrist in the Conservative Party who was brought in as finance minister to steady the ship during Liz Truss’ chaotic administration in 2022, warned: “It isn’t enough just to mouth platitudes about do you feel better off than you felt five years ago when you’ve had a pandemic and an energy shock the like of which we’ve never seen in our lifetime before. 

“What people want is answers and the way to deal with extremism in politics is to make sure that you demonstrate competence,” he argued.

Hunt was also pressed on claims that Sunak’s headline-grabbing manifesto commitment this week to cut National Insurance contributions for self-employed workers has disappointed Tories hoping for more decisive tax cuts. 

It’s the latest move on National Insurance from the Tories, who have not been rewarded in the polls for previous cuts to the the employment tax.

“When you do something like cutting National Insurance … of course you hope you move the polls — but what you’re really trying to do is to win an argument,” the chancellor said.

He added: “I think the golden rule of campaigning is make sure you base your argument on something that is fundamentally true. 

“And in this case, taxes really would be higher under a Labour government. And so we can start to win the argument that the attitude to tax is the big difference between Conservatives and a future Labour government.”

The POLITICO Power Play podcast, hosted by Anne McElvoy, is out Thursday. Listen and subscribe here.