Sunak hopes tax cuts pave the way to No 10 but do voters believe him?

ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston asks the PM why 'anyone should believe' him when it comes to cutting tax 'given tax burdens have been pushed up since 2010'

Sunak’s election strategy is old-fashioned.

It’s a promise (bribe) of tax cuts for pretty much every demographic: employees, the self-employed, families with children on above-average incomes, pensioners, and first-time house buyers.

His hope is that significant numbers of them, who may be thinking of voting Labour or Reform, will instead put an X next to the Tory candidate’s name, once they are in the privacy of the polling-station cubicle and where no one can ever know what they’ve done.

“It’s a slightly cynical bet on human nature” said one of his closer ministerial colleagues.

He’s right.

But as I put to the PM in my question at the manifesto launch, the strategy only works if voters believe the actions of the Tories in government for 14 years, where they’ve been raising the burden of taxes to levels we’ve not experienced since the late 1940s, are an anomaly, and should not be seen as a signifier of things to come.

It is all about the credibility of jam tomorrow, and the credibility of Sunak as the jam maker.

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