Labour will come under sustained pressure to set out their detailed tax plans when the party launches its own manifesto later in the week and when Starmer is interviewed by Sky News on Wednesday evening.
There are over four million self-employed workers in the UK, a number which has grown steadily over the last 20 years. “I do think there is something special about those people who are self-employed,” Sunak said. (The same Sunak who dragged his heels during the pandemic over providing cash to the self-employed.)
A Tory activist in green tweed, the spitting image of the King, clapped his hands. Sunak mentioned Starmer in the same breath as Iran and China, hoping to imply the Labour leader fell into the category of hostile state threat.
The racing cars were silenced for the launch of the manifesto, amid the filming of an as-yet-untitled Brad Pitt movie. Sunak couldn’t resist a couple of Pitt jokes, including comparing Keir Starmer’s tax plans to Fight Club: “The first rule of Labour’s tax plans is never talk about tax plans.”
Afterwards, a lone rally car whooshed along the track, sparking soon-to-be-dashed hopes that the Hollywood star may emerge.
Ahead of the event, attended by most of the Cabinet, Sunak was introduced by two warm-up acts. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan popped up to say she’d started her working career as an engineering apprentice – I almost expected her to say she was the son of a toolmaker. Then the Tory Mayor of Tees Valley, Ben Houchen, like a modern-day Warwick, defended the Tories’ record in the North and claimed rather improbably a Labour government would lead to “Armageddon”.
Young Tory staffers filmed the press taking the manifesto, with no minute of a modern-day election campaign considered unworthy of TikTok.
But for all he did announce, Sunak disappointed the right of his party. He barely moved the dial in language towards the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); a plan to speed up the processing of immigrants led to an accusation the Tories are aping a Labour policy they themselves had described as an “amnesty”. Sunak roundly rejected that claim, but the lack of any surprises in the document did little to allay concerns within the party that they are failing to make in-roads into Labour’s 20-point-lead.
The slimline costings document published alongside the manifesto shows that Sunak’s pledges are underwritten by two streams of cash: £12bn in savings by reforming welfare over the course of the next parliament and raising £6bn by clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion. A further £1.2bn would come from that old favourite of politics, so-called “quango efficiencies”, alongside £3.9bn from reducing the Civil Service headcount.
A clampdown on tax evasion and avoidance may not lead to a steady income stream and needs more investment in the underperforming HM Revenue and Customs. Meanwhile welfare spending has steadily risen under the Conservatives and is forecast to keep on rising over the next five years.
The party also unveiled plans to increase sentences for the most serious offences while introducing new penalties for low-level crime. The manifesto promised to increase the minimum sentence for murders that take place in the home from 15 to 25 years and also promised an American system of first and second-degree murder, alongside four new prisons.
Defence spending will rise to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2030, under the plans. The Tories will also introduce a legal cap on migration by limiting the number of work and family visas issued to a level set by parliament that would fall every year. A “regular rhythm” of flights will take off to Rwanda every month, starting in July, until the small boat Channel crossings end.
The plan also pledges to increase NHS spending above inflation every year, recruit more nurses and doctors, and improve NHS productivity. It will also permanently abolish stamp duty for homes up to £425,000 for first-time buyers in England and Northern Ireland, introduce a new Help to Buy scheme, and deliver 1.6 million homes in England in the next parliament although there are no details on what the Conservatives would do to improve social housing supply.
Opposition parties immediately demanded to know if the measures are affordable. On Monday, Sunak denied in a TV interview that he was acting like his predecessor Liz Truss by making a series of unfunded pledges. Starmer compared Sunak’s manifesto to Jeremy Corbyn’s extraordinarily generous offering in 2019 that voters rejected for its unaffordability.
Although they gave Sunak a couple of standing ovations for form’s sake, the crowd at Silverstone seemed muted and unmoved. The Cabinet who have been allowed out this campaign milled about afterwards giving interviews. Mel Stride, who must be in line for a peerage for his services defending all-comers against Sunak, was there.
So too James Cleverly, Mark Harper and Victoria Atkins. Michael Gove, radiating the exuberance of a man who knows he’s out of the whole sorry business soon, looked like he’d had a glow-up. “Is that Brad Pitt?” joked a photographer.
After his warm-up acts, Sunak had emerged from behind a ceiling-to-floor black curtain onto the stage to a campaign video featuring helicopters and multiple shots of David Cameron. Asked whether the black curtain was hiding the Wizard of Oz, a Cabinet minister replied: “There’s nothing really there.” It seemed to sum up a bigger truth about Sunak’s prospects.