Tories fear poll disaster over high taxes
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is facing a growing Tory revolt over economic policy and his handling of the cost of living crisis, as senior Conservatives warn that high taxes will fatally undermine their party’s appeal to voters at the next general election.
Former Tory cabinet minister David Davis said on Saturday that if the Conservatives were to become known as the party of high taxes, the damage to their economic reputation would be as deep and lasting as that inflicted on John Major’s government by the disaster of Black Wednesday in September 1992.
Davis told the Observer that with the country now operating with the highest overall tax burden for decades, the electoral dangers were clear.
“Acquiring a reputation for being the high-tax party will do every bit as much damage to the Conservative Party as the ERM crisis did to us in the 1990s,” Davis said.
The UK’s chaotic and costly exit from the EU’s exchange rate mechanism scarred the Major government’s reputation for economic management and put it on course for the crushing defeat by New Labour in 1997.
Last week a poll for the LabourList website caused deep concern among Tory MPs, as it found the Conservatives were already seen as the party of high taxation by more voters (39%) than had that view of Labour (27%).
Asked which they regarded as the party of low taxation, 30% named Labour and 27% cited the Tories in the Savanta ComRes survey.
Even after offering some limited tax reductions in last month’s spring statement, as Sunak tried to ease the effects of the cost-of-living crisis, the overall burden of taxation in the UK is still at it highest since the 1950s, when the country was rebuilding after the second world war.
Sunak, who is reportedly heading to California for a
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