Sunak’s pitch to Brits: You might hate the Tories, but we’ll cut your taxes

SILVERSTONE, England — Rishi Sunak had a clear message to British voters Tuesday as he unveiled the Conservatives’ election manifesto: Give us one more chance, and we’ll slash your taxes.

Sunak’s speech — and the 70-page document he went to the Silverstone racetrack to sell — seemed tightly focused on shoring up the fracturing Tory electoral base as Labour storms ahead in the polls and the prime minister faces a serious challenge on his right flank from Nigel Farage’s Reform party.

Tellingly, the embattled prime minister has been campaigning mostly in traditional Tory heartlands — affluent towns in England’s Home Counties — in an apparent attempt to limit Conservative losses, rather than to defeat Labour.

And he has a real fight on his hands to do even that. A survey by pollster JL Partners shows Sunak is now less popular than Farage with 2019 Conservative voters, after the arch-Brexiteer announced he was standing for parliament.

With that in mind, Sunak went for the Tory hits in his Tuesday manifesto launch.

Appeals to the base

Tax cuts were front and center, as Sunak promised to reduce the National Insurance employment tax and vowed more relief would be on the way if the Tories won. He floated a further 2-pence slash to National Insurance by 2027, and said the levy would be abolished for the self-employed.

Yet the low-tax gambit is a hard one to sell. Previous cuts to NI haven’t moved the polls, and didn’t stop Britain’s overall tax burden from rising to record levels.

Sunak tried to go on the offensive as well by repeating a contested claim that Labour would hike everyone’s taxes by more than £2,000. That figure has been the source of much controversy as it is based on estimates from political special advisers, would only be levied on a few groups, and is spread over five years.

But none of that has prevented Sunak from repeatedly deploying the attack line as the Tories try to make something, anything, stick on Labour Leader Keir Starmer. 

Appeals to the Conservative base were also evident in Sunak’s rhetoric on home ownership — he said the party were stewards of “property-owning democracy” — and his tough talk about stopping migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats.

Some in his party may be disappointed that, despite the tough talk, Sunak didn’t go as far as vowing to pull Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to get his troubled scheme to deport migrants to Rwanda off the ground. Farage’s Reform — who won’t have to deal with governing — have no such trouble making that commitment.

Humble pie

There was some real humility from Sunak too after 14 years of Conservative government.

Tax cuts were front and center, as Sunak promised to reduce the National Insurance employment tax and vowed more relief would be on the way if the Tories won. | Leon Neal/Getty Images

“I’m not blind to the fact that people are frustrated with our party and frustrated with me,” he said. “Things have not always been easy. And we have not got everything right.”

That marks a very different attitude from Sunak, who has been criticized for his perceived tetchiness and personal wealth.

The country has collectively experienced a turbulent four years — Covid, rampant inflation, straining public services — and there is a clear sense of anger with the governing party among the British public.

The prime minister is now trying to show he understands that anger — and can meet it with action. He mounted a robust defense of the entirety of the Conservative record, at one point chummily name-checking his old nemesis, “Boris.”

The Conservatives won the 2019 election campaign under Boris Johnson with two key promises — that he would “get Brexit done,” and that he would “level up” the U.K. by reducing the country’s economic divides between North and South.

The leveling-up policy was particularly attractive to the party’s voters in Brexit-voting Labour heartlands in 2019. Many in these areas, often former industrial or mining towns, felt forgotten by the past 40 years of political discourse; Johnson offered them a new kind of fiscally expansive conservatism to bring greater prosperity.

Four years on, Sunak appears to have given up on this idea in favor of a core Tory message.

The prime minister mentioned leveling-up just once in his speech Tuesday, in a section lasting less than 30 seconds.

Nor was there a big offer in the manifesto to bridge regional inequalities across the U.K. beyond a plan to pay for compulsory national service — including a stint in the military — for 18-year-olds by taking funding from a leveling regeneration program.

Beyond the tax cuts, Sunak’s core argument to voters has been this: You may not like him, or the Tories, very much — but at least you know what you’re getting.

By contrast, the prime minister has accused Starmer and Labour of having no plan and of trying to stroll into No. 10 without scrutiny.

“If you’re not sure what Labour will do, don’t vote for them,” he said.