Sunak’s manifesto changes very little

After going AWOL following his D-Day escape, Sunak returned today to deliver his party’s manifesto. Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, labelled it the “most expensive panic attack in history”. Others joked about how fast the wheels can come off the bus at Silverstone. But is Rishi Sunak’s election manifesto a disaster? Let’s have a look.

Sunak has announced £17bn worth of tax cuts. For workers, this will mean a 2p cut to National Insurance by 2027 and scrapping the main rate of self-employed NI entirely by the end of the next parliament. 

For the grey vote, it was confirmed that the Tories will introduce the “Triple Lock Plus”, which would make sure the state pension doesn’t get dragged into income tax.

For the youth, Sunak announced the introduction of mandatory national service for school leavers at 18 and 100,000 apprenticeships for young people paid for by curbing “poor quality” university degrees. 

Fearing Farage and Reform, he announced plans for a legal cap on migration by limiting the number of work and family visas issued to a level set by parliament, saying that the number would fall year on year. Sunak spoke of his desire for a “regular rhythm” of flights to Rwanda every month, starting in July and lasting until the small boat Channel crossings stop, but didn’t commit to any concrete numbers. 

To fix the housing crisis, the Tories claim they will permanently abolish stamp duty for homes up to £425,000 for first-time buyers in England and Northern Ireland, introduce a new Help to Buy scheme and deliver 1.6 million homes in England.

What else was there? Importantly, a promise to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent. Far in the future, the Tories have promised to build four new prisons housing up to 20,000 prisoners but not in the next parliament. 

This all sounds great and, of course, manifestos are meant to. But can Sunak actually come through on his promises? How will they be funded? 

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has accused Sunak of “gaslighting” the public. Blasting the manifesto as a “desperate wish list of unfunded promises”, Reeves accused it of costing £71bn that the Tories don’t have. Invoking Liz Truss and the disastrous mini-budget that wrecked the economy, Reeves said: “They’ve done it before and this is proof they will do it again.” 

Reeves was brief and direct as she outlined major problems with specific policies. On the bogus degrees, she asked, how will Sunak stop students from just choosing to study something else, thus the funding would merely go to different courses and not to apprenticeships? On raising funds through tax evasion, she said that could not be done without initial extra funding for HMRC. On national service, she said Sunak had not mentioned the cost of training and lodging which will make it prohibitively expensive. It seems many manifesto pledges are easily punctured. 

Paul Johnson of the IFS also doubted the affordability of the plans. He said the cuts were “uncertain, unspecific and apparently victimless savings,” of which he has a “degree of scepticism”.  

Robert Peel, a father of the modern Conservative party who served twice as prime minister, wrote his canonical Tamworth manifesto in 1834. His aim was to distinguish his brand of Conservatism from that of his predecessor, the Duke of Wellington. Peel claimed that the party “would reform to survive” and steer clear of unnecessary change to avoid “a perpetual vortex of agitation”. 

Two hundred years on, the goal of politics is still to avoid that vortex of agitation. So far, Sunak has consummately failed to do so and this manifesto, so easy to pick holes in, is unlikely to change that. 

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