Double-Speak: UK Chancellor Vows Lower Taxes… While Increasing Them

LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 03: Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak hosts a p
Justin Tallis - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Peter Caddle

The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer is spinning financial double-speak, promising that he will cut taxes despite having just increased them.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, has vowed to Britain a future regime of lowering taxes, swearing that he “firmly believes” in lowering taxes.

This is despite the fact that both he and Prime Minister Boris Johnson have only just committed to implementing a massive tax hike after years of wild spending.

According to a report by The Telegraph,  the Chancellor vowed he would be cutting taxes in the years ahead in a speech outlining his economic vision.

“I firmly believe in lower taxes,” declared Sunak, just weeks after he raised them.

“The most powerful case for the dynamic market economy is that it brings economic freedom and prosperity. And the best expression of that freedom is for all of us to be able to make decisions about how to save, invest or use the money we earn,” he continued.

“The marginal pound our country produces is far better spent by individuals and businesses than government,” the honorary double-speak minister also declared, despite having committed to significantly increasing the UK’s “National Insurance” payroll tax late last month, alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The pair justified the tax increase by saying that Britain had to pay the costs for fighting off the Chinese Coronavirus, having spent hundreds of billions on measures the government chose to pursue, with the wholly foreseeable consequence of tax raises.

“The cost has been enormous — well over £400 billion,” the pair wrote in an opinion piece. “We have been able to afford it because the Conservative government is careful with the nation’s finances.”

“We must continue to be responsible now, as we deal with Covid aftershocks — and above all with the Covid backlogs in healthcare,” Johnson and Sunak also claimed.

Despite spending their jointly-penned Op-Ed justifying the tax hike, both insisted that they were “Thatcherites” committed to tax cuts.

“We are tax-cutting Conservatives,” the two declared. “We believe people are the best judges of how to spend their money.”

Sunak appears to have largely kept to this narrative, saying that while he was raising taxes now, he is promising to lower them later.

“I am disheartened when I hear the flippant claim that ‘tax cuts always pay for themselves’. They do not,” the Chancellor claimed.

“Cutting tax sustainably requires hard work, prioritisation and the willingness to make difficult and often unpopular arguments elsewhere,” he continued.

“I am going to deliver a lower tax economy but I am going to do so in a responsible way, and in a way that tackles our long-term challenges,” Sunak also claimed.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.