With tax cuts pledges galore, the Tories are out of touch with economic reality

theguardian.com:

Imagine for a second that it was Labour rather than the Tories choosing the next prime minister. Consider what the response would be if the hopefuls said it would be no problem to find an extra £30bn to tackle poverty or an additional £40bn for the NHS, and vied with each other to come up with the most ambitious spending pledges.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out what the response from the Conservatives and the Conservative-supporting papers would be. At the very least, there would be questions asked about how the plans would be financed. More likely there would be warnings of a run on the pound and imminent economic meltdown. The headlines would read something like: “Loony left plans to bankrupt Britain”.

Funnily enough, a different view is taken of the deep and immediate tax cuts now being promised by almost all those bidding to replace Boris Johnson. To those egging on the candidates, these are not reckless fiscal incontinence that will give the City the jitters. They do not represent voodoo economics, in which tax cuts pay for themselves. If you think the Tories in the summer of 2022 are in a similar place to where Labour was in the 2019 general election campaign, you could not be more wrong. As far as the right is concerned, tax cuts are the only way to grow the economy and make Britain great again.

This is wrong on many levels, but let’s begin with the idea that there is something wildly dangerous about the level of taxes in the UK. International comparisons produced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development show that last year tax revenues as a share of national income across its rich-country members stood at 32.9%. The figure for the UK was 32.8%.

To be sure, the UK’s tax take is rising and is