Labour tax row: You'd better start saving now, say under-pressure Tories
The Tories launched an all-out tax war on Labour on Monday with an alarming warning to millions of people across Britain to start saving if they think Sir Keir Starmer will get into No10.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was sent out onto the airwaves as polls pointed towards the Conservatives being hammered on July 4. He admitted that a Tory election win was “not the most likely outcome”. Some senior Tories were urging Rishi Sunak to change tactics and launch deeply personal attacks on Labour leader Sir Keir in the last few weeks of the campaign.
But Mr Shapps instead doubled down on the tax onslaught, even though the Tory claims have been undermined by the Treasury, independent fact checkers and the UK’s statistics watchdog, and have so far failed to improve the party’s dismal polling some 20 points behind Labour.
Polls suggest the Tories will haemorrhage seats with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK taking chunks out of the their vote, with some surveys suggesting they could even end up with less than 100 MPs.
With less than three weeks to polling day, Mr Shapps told Sky News: “We can’t risk having a Labour government, or a very large Labour majority, a so-called super-majority would be very bad news, higher taxes for everybody — on your home, on your car, on your job, on your pensions.”
Earlier he told GB News: “If you believe Labour are going to win, you need to start saving now.”
Shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth dismissed the latest Tory claim that Labour would hike council tax through the re-banding of properties. He told Sky News: “No increase in income tax, no increase in national insurance, no increase in VAT or corporation tax. We’re not doing council tax re-banding. All our policies are fully-funded, they do not require additional tax increases.”
But Labour’s plans for better public services are based on getting healthy economic growth for Britain, which it has not had for years. It has refused to say whether it would increase other taxes including capital gains tax, fuel duty or stamp duty.
The Tories have pledged to cut a further 2p off national insurance and abolish the main rate for the self-employed. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that their plans are based on making £12 billion of welfare savings and £5 billion from clamping down on tax avoidance, money that they are not guaranteed to get.
The respected economists have accused both main parties of not being honest about the tough public spending cuts, or tax rises, facing the country after July 4.
The UK Statistics Authority has also rapped the Conservatives for claiming that households would be hit with a £2,000 tax hike under a Labour government, stressing that this was a figure over four years, which ministers have failed to make clear.
Monday’s Standard front page (Christian Adams/Evening Standard)
A Labour spokeswoman claimed: “The Tories are making ever more desperate claims because their record lies in tatters.”
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves told business leaders in London that holding a global investment summit in the first 100 days of entering government would show Labour is “pro-business” and would “crack on to unlock investment”.
She also signalled Labour would seek closer trade ties with the EU, including a better deal for financial services workers.
Mr Shapps, seeking re-election in Welwyn Hatfield, became the second Cabinet minister, after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt contesting Godalming and Ash, to admit that their seats are on “a knife edge”.
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