Will the Tory hopefuls deliver on their tax promises?

Rather unsurprisingly, the bulk of MPs who have declared their leadership bids so far are promising lower taxes. Also unsurprisingly, very few details are on offer explaining how they’d do it.

In Nadhim Zahawi’s early pitch to the public — he is expected to share more tomorrow — he’s asserted that ‘taxes for individuals, families and business need to be lower – and will be on my watch.’ Tom Tugendhat’s ‘clean start’ manifesto made a similar point: ‘Taxes, bluntly, are too high,’ he asserted, ‘and there is an emerging consensus across the party that they must come down.’ Penny Mordant’s leadership pitch today promises ‘new economic vision’ — something we certainly need after two and half years of Johnson’s economic cake-ism and tax hikes, yet completely absent of any information about what that new direction might be.

Many of these pledges are both promises to the public as well as veiled attacks on the betting market’s current frontrunner, Rishi Sunak, who is in the tricky spot of explaining to Tory MPs — and soon possibly the party’s grassroots — why the tax burden crept to a 72-year high under his watch. Sunak is countering these attacks by putting great emphasis on fiscal responsibility; pre-empting emphasis on the tax burden by saying early on that ‘fairy tales that might make us feel better in the moment but will leave our children worse off tomorrow’ (read ‘fairy tales’ as ‘unfunded tax cuts’).

Few leadership contenders are addressing the funding point. Kemi Badenoch’s announcement in the Times called out the Tory party’s new spending addiction, linking the promise of tax cuts to a requirement to also trim back the size of the state.

Jeremy Hunt also rose to Sunak’s challenge on Sky News this morning as he was announcing his plans to drop corporation tax to 15 per cent. “No Conservative should promise unfunded tax cuts’ he told Sophy Ridge, promising to publish a full costing of his tax plans. Such a pledge allows more scope to get into the specifics of the tax cuts and a big policy debate that has kicked off in the Tory party since Sunak reversed George Osborne’s corporation tax cuts: does a higher rate really lead to more revenue? ’It’s not the most sexy of cuts,’ Hunt told Ridge, ‘but it just matters.’

This stands in contrast to Sajid Javid’s remarkable pledge in the Sunday Telegraph today to toss out the National Insurance increase to pay for social care. It’s a surprising pledge, not least because he, Sunak and Boris Johnson all mutually agreed to the tax hike last September.

Has Javid figured out another way to pay for billions-worth of day-to-day social care spending in the future? Is he planning to scrap the policy — which protects the assets of the wealthy if they need social care — and brainstorm something else all together?

And will there even be time to ensure these questions about tax cuts and spending are answered before the first round of MP voting kicks off? If not, there will be even more pressure on the Tory grassroots to uncover who has a serious plans for cutting taxes, and who is making promises without a plan to deliver.