Are we heading for a U-turn on the U-turn over the scrapping of the 45p tax rate? Liz Truss has said she would still like the top rate on high earners to come down, despite reversing on the policy just yesterday. Members of her cabinet agree she should bring it back: Suella Braverman has blasted Tory MPs for forcing the PM to ditch the tax cut. The Home Secretary said:
‘I’m very disappointed that members of our own parliamentary party staged a coup effectively and undermined the authority of the Prime Minister.’
Could the 45p tax cut really make a comeback?
Levelling-up secretary Simon Clarke endorsed Braverman’s comments on Twitter, commenting that ‘Suella speaks a lot of good sense, as usual.’
So could the 45p tax cut really make a comeback? Truss insisted it’s not currently on the agenda, but she didn’t rule out returning to the issue. Speaking to the BBC, the PM said she ‘would like to see the higher rate lower’ in a bid to make the UK ‘a competitive country.’
Scrapping plans to abolish the top tax rate, it seems, was not due to a change of heart or a reconsideration of the policy itself. Rather it had become a ‘distraction from the major policies,’ Truss insisted – one that she did not want to see continue.
Is this plan realistic? While Truss and Kwarteng might have ditched the policy to renew focus on the rest of their growth strategy, doing so has also broken trust within the party, and suggested (very) early on in her premiership that she can be bounced into U-turns, even on major policy.
Having failed to properly make the case for binning the top rate in the first place will make it even more difficult to resurrect. The very public way in which this debate played out for the Tory party will make it even more politically toxic to return to. Any attempt to rekindle the discussion will need to wait until the memory of this party conference is long in the past. Given what a memorable few days it’s been in politics, that could take some time.
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