The PM's manifesto had a crucial purpose: to quieten his enemies
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty arrive at an event to launch the Conservative Party’s manifesto at Silverstone , the launch of the Tory manifesto was peak competence in the Tory event planning department. Silverstone was the venue, chosen for its electorally relevant Midlands location. A racetrack provided the apt metaphor for a place where policies and pledges go whizzing round and round at increasing speed, without much actually happening.
Sunak duly insisted that all Cabinet ministers drop previous commitments to attend the launch – a show of unity through gritted teeth, intended to warn off backbench rebels rumoured to be threatening an “alternative manifesto”. The offer of a 2p in the pound national insurance cut and abolishing the tax entirely for the self-employed – “worth £1,300 pounds to the average worker” – was was hailed as tax cut, though hopes of an inheritance or income tax cut went unfulfilled.
Sunak’s precarious position means that the measures announced with most volume today are those which his strategists reckon can widen the dividing lines in areas sensitive for Labour – migration and the Rwanda scheme – while earning the grudging approval of party hardliners who, like Suella Braverman, want a fuller commitment to leave the European Court of Human Rights .
One Sunakite backbencher adds: “the question for all of these people is whether they go into battle now and say a lame manifesto lost us the election badly – or do they wait and say it the morning after?”
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