Rishi Sunak is set to launch a series of consultations with Conservative MPs as he shapes his party’s election manifesto, with promises of ambitious tax cuts expected to form a key part of his attempt to defy the odds and win another term in office.
The prime minister’s allies said that ministers and backbenchers will have an input into the manifesto. A series of policy commissions are planned, although they have yet to be convened.
“Number 10 is keen,” said one party grandee and a spokesman for Sunak confirmed he would be seeking views from his parliamentary party to shape a document mapping out ideas for a fifth consecutive Tory term.
Conservative insiders briefed on the prime minister’s thinking said he wanted to promise tax cuts at the election to build on expected reductions to income tax or national insurance in next month’s Budget.
“He thinks it’s a key dividing line,” said one person. “There is talk about the promise Rishi made in 2022 to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20p to 16p by the end of the next parliament.”
Sunak promised during his bid for the Tory leadership in 2022, when he was beaten by Liz Truss, that if he won he would cut the basic rate of income tax in 2024 from 20 per cent to 19 per cent, eventually reaching 16 per cent by 2029.
“We said that we do want to cut taxes more at future events, when we can responsibly do so,” Sunak said last month. “Our priority is very clear. It’s controlling spending and welfare so that we can cut people’s taxes.”
Sunak’s allies added that the prime minister’s ambition to cut taxes remained since the 2022 pledge but cautioned the economic backdrop had changed; the UK entered a technical recession at the end of last year.
Leading economists have argued such ambitions fly in the face of the reality given the weakened state of public services and that whoever becomes prime minister at the next election will be under pressure to raise taxes.
Yet Sunak will seek to persuade voters he could fund tax cuts through improvements to productivity in public services, including through the use of artificial intelligence. Eleanor Shawcross, a Number 10 aide who used to run the policy unit, is advising Sunak on the issue.
Sunak has said he expects the next general election, which he must hold by January 2025, will happen in the second half of this year.
The prime minister will receive a wide range of views from Tory MPs, with the One Nation group pressing for policies to appeal to the centre ground while the Tory right wants tougher policies on migration, welfare and cultural issues.
Will Tanner, a centre-right former aide to ex-premier Theresa May and a levelling up advocate, is expected to play a key role in preparing the manifesto, according to officials briefed on the plan.
Tanner, Downing Street deputy chief of staff and recently appointed head of the policy unit, has started taking soundings from think-tanks including the Centre for Policy Studies, Policy Exchange and Onward, which he founded in 2018.
“Will is driving this whole thing,” said one Tory insider, adding they expected Tanner to pull the manifesto together. Sunak’s allies confirmed Tanner would be involved but said it had not yet been decided who would “hold the pen” on the document.
Lord Jo Johnson, who drafted David Cameron’s 2015 Tory manifesto, said that policy commissions were vital to give MPs a say and to bind them into the policy agenda at the next election. “Doing that is massively time-consuming, but it’s necessary,” he said.
Johnson added that consultation with cabinet ministers and MPs was part of the crucial process of testing ideas. “While our manifesto wasn’t perfect, we had totally bomb-proofed it from detonating a general election campaign,” he said.
The opposite happened in 2017 when May’s manifesto, overseen by her former joint chief of staff Nick Timothy, included a self-destructing social care reform plan, dubbed “the dementia tax”.
People involved in previous Tory manifestos said the drafting of the final document had to be a secretive affair, ultimately signed off by the party leader, to hold back some surprises for the campaign.
Cabinet ministers, for example, are only normally shown sections relating to their policy area to avoid leaks.
“The only people who see the final document are the drafter, the prime minister, the head of the campaign and the chancellor,” said one veteran party strategist. “You have to make sure the sums add up.”
Sir Lynton Crosby, Cameron’s election supremo, used to ask: “Why do we need a manifesto?” He believed detailed policy prescriptions were always in danger of unravelling during a campaign and preferred to focus on broad themes.
One Tory insider said Sunak’s manifesto would be different in one key respect to the ones published by Cameron, May and Boris Johnson: on those occasions, the Tory leader of the day expected to win the election and wanted a mandate for their policies.
Sunak’s Conservatives have lagged behind Labour in the polls by double-digit figures since late 2022 and recently lost two former stronghold constituencies to the main opposition party in by-election battles.
“This manifesto will be more political,” the insider said. Did that mean it would contain policies that its authors knew had little chance of being implemented because Labour was expected to win the election? “You might say that I couldn’t possibly comment.”
