Overall the Tories have played an extremely safe hand with their manifesto. An interesting (possibly worrying) narrative to tease out on taxes tho. 1/5

#ConservativeManifesto

This “triple tax lock" sounds nice at first to the low-tax lot, ruling out hikes to income tax, NI, and VAT. But this leaves Tories room to hike other taxes, which often get passed on to employees or consumers (ie the dreaded digital services tax they’re pushing forward with) 2/5

This ‘look over here’ tactic is a far cry from the bullish tax-cutting agenda Johnson laid out during the Tory leadership race. In fact, the Tories have focused primarily on more spending, rather than tax-cutting in their agenda thus far. 3/5

Credit where it’s due - Tories recognise that to keep spending promises *and be responsible* ( Labour), they need revenue to pay for them. But it’s increasingly clear they don’t plan (soon anyway) to set out any meaningful area where they think state spending could be cut 4/5

This is really very disappointing. Even with the tax burden at a near-50 year high & public spending around 40% of GDP, the ‘party of taxpayers’ isn’t providing any clear plan to bring these figures down and relieve burden shouldered by taxpayers. 5/5

Full @iealondon response to #ConservativeManifesto here, including @MarkJLittlewood on the tax triple lock and @julianHjessop on the digital services tax: https://iea.org.uk/media/iea-responds-to-conservative-partys-manifesto/