Tax cuts ‘electoral suicide for Tories’, says Dominic Raab

The Conservatives will be writing an ‘electoral suicide note’ if Liz Truss pushes ahead with her plans for an emergency tax-­cutting budget, Dominic Raab has warned.

British Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab. Picture: AFP

The Conservatives will be writing an “electoral suicide note” if Liz Truss pushes ahead with her plans for an emergency tax-­cutting budget, Boris Johnson’s deputy has warned.

Dominic Raab said the prime ministerial candidate’s strategy of prioritising tax cuts would damage the living standards of millions of voters who would cast the Tories into the “impotent ­oblivion” of opposition at the next election.

It is the strongest attack yet on the Foreign Minister, who is the frontrunner in the Tory leadership race, by supporters of her rival, Rishi Sunak.

The warning, in an article for The Times, came as Mr Sunak prepared to launch his own plans to combat the cost-of-living crisis. The former chancellor is expected to pledge to extend the support package for rising energy bills that he announced this year.

In May, he said every household would get £400 ($693) off their energy bills, while those on means-tested benefits would ­receive another £650.

However, that package was based on a prediction that average bills would be no higher than £2800. The most recent analysis suggests that the energy price cap could jump to £3500 in October, and to £4000 in January.

Sources close to Mr Sunak said his priority would be to increase support for the most vulnerable but there was also likely to be an increase in the £400 universal payment.

However, the Truss campaign said Mr Sunak’s move was a “mammoth strategic U-turn”.

Her allies said: “The question for Rishi is how is he going to fund these new promises? Three weeks ago he was saying more borrowing was inflationary. Has he changed his mind?”

In his article for The Times, Mr Raab said while the Tories were right to believe in lower taxes, the party also had to be “pragmatic” and “deal with the country and the world as we find it”.

“All the evidence tells us that with inflation running high and energy bills the highest for decades, the winter will be ­extremely difficult,” he wrote.

“Those pressures are well ­beyond the living memory of millions of voters, and will ­directly affect millions more.”

Mr Raab said it was wrong for the Truss campaign not to be laying out plans to “shield them from the full force of the global economic headwinds”. It was even worse to instead propose tax cuts that would disproportionately benefit those most able to pay for spiralling ­energy costs.

“If we go to the country in September with an emergency budget that fails to measure up to the task, voters will not forgive us,” he wrote. “Such a failure will read unmistakenly to the public like an electoral suicide note and see our great party cast into the impotent oblivion of opposition.”

The row came as business leaders joined calls for Mr Johnson to work with the leadership candidates on a cost-of-living package now, rather than wait for his successor as prime minister to be chosen in September.

The Confederation of British Industry said the country “simply cannot afford a summer of government inactivity while the leadership contest plays out”.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said Mr Johnson, who is back in Downing Street after a holiday in Slovenia, could not intervene. “By convention it is not for this Prime Minister to make major fiscal interventions during this period. It will be for a future prime minister,” he said.

The Times