Jeremy Hunt to promise further tax cuts as pre-general election battle hots up
Jeremy Hunt will promise further tax cuts if the Tories win the next general election and will accuse the Labour Party of not being honest about how it will fund its spending pledges.
The chancellor will give a speech in London on Friday in which he will accuse his shadow, Rachel Reeves, of resorting to “playground politics” with her criticism of the high levels of taxation on UK households.
Mr Hunt will also reiterate his ambition to eradicate the national insurance tax – which the Tories have already slashed twice in a bid to move the polls – where they currently lag 20 points behind Labour.
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Labour has attacked the policy as an unfunded £46bn pledge and likened it to the policies that saw Liz Truss resign from office after just 44 days as prime minister.
The chancellor was previously forced to make clear that his desire to abolish the “unfair” national insurance tax would not happen “any time soon”.
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The chancellor described national insurance as a “tax on work” and said he believed it was “unfair that we tax work twice” when other forms of income are only taxed once.
The overall tax burden is expected to increase over the next five years to around 37% of gross domestic product – close to a post-Second World War high – but Mr Hunt will argue the furlough scheme brought in during the pandemic and the help the government gave households for heating both needed to be paid for.
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Last week: National Insurance to be axed ‘when it’s affordable’
“Labour like to criticise tax rises this parliament thinking people don’t know why they have gone up – the furlough scheme, the energy price guarantee and billions of pounds of cost-of-living support, policies Labour themselves supported,” he will say.
“Which is why it is playground politics to use those tax rises to distract debate from the biggest divide in British politics – which is what happens next.
“Conservatives recognise that whilst those tax rises may have been necessary, they should not be permanent. Labour do not.”
James Murray, Labour’s shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said: “There is nothing Jeremy Hunt can say or do to hide that fact that working people are worse off after 14 years of economic failure under the Conservatives.”
Millionaire Tory donor Malcolm Offord has defected to Reform UK, saying he would be campaigning “tirelessly” to “remove this rotten SNP government”.
Nigel Farage announced the former Conservative life peer’s defection during a rally in the Scottish town of Falkirk, where regular anti-immigration protests have taken place outside the Cladhan Hotel – which is being used to house asylum seekers.
Mr Farage, Reform UK’s leader, said he was “delighted” to welcome Greenock-born Lord Offord to Reform, describing his defection as “a brave and historic act”.
He added: “He will take Reform UK Scotland to a new level.”
During a speech, Lord Offord, who previously donated nearly £150,000 to the Tories, said he would be quitting the Conservative Party and giving up his place in the House of Lords as he prepares to campaign for a seat in Holyrood in May.
The 61-year-old said he wanted to restore Scotland to a “prosperous, happy, healthy country”.
“Scotland needs Reform and Reform is coming to Scotland,” he told the rally.
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“Today I can announce that I am resigning from the Conservative Party. Today I am joining Reform UK and today I announce my intention to stand for Reform in the Holyrood election in May next year.
“And that means that from today, for the next five months, day and night, I shall be campaigning with all of you tirelessly for two objectives.
“The first objective is to remove this rotten SNP government after 18 years, and the second is to present a positive vision for Scotland inside the UK, to restore Scotland to being a prosperous, proud, healthy and happy country.”
The latest defection comes as Mr Farage finds himself at the centre of allegations of racism dating back to his time in school.
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Claims made against Nigel Farage
Sky News reported on Saturday that a former schoolfriend of Mr Farage claimed he sang antisemitic songs to Jewish schoolmates – and had a “big issue with anyone called Patel”.
Jean-Pierre Lihou, 61, was initially friends with the Reform UK leader when he arrived at Dulwich College in the 1970s, at the time when Mr Farage is accused of saying antisemitic and other racist remarks by more than a dozen pupils.
Mr Farage has said he “never directly racially abused anybody” at Dulwich and said there is a “strong political element” to the allegations coming out 49 years later.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice has called the ex-classmates “liars”.
A Reform UK spokesman accused Sky News of “scraping the barrel” and being “desperate to stop us winning the next election”.
The European Commission’s proposal to expand the powers of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is raising concerns about the centralization of the bloc’s licensing regime, despite signaling deeper institutional ambitions for its capital markets structure.
On Thursday, the Commission published a package proposing to “direct supervisory competences” for key pieces of market infrastructure, including crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), trading venues and central counterparties to ESMA, Cointelegraph reported.
Concerningly, the ESMA’s jurisdiction would extend to both the supervision and licensing of all European crypto and financial technology (fintech) firms, potentially leading to slower licensing regimes and hindering startup development, according to Faustine Fleuret, head of public affairs at decentralized lending protocol Morpho.
“I am even more concerned that the proposal makes ESMA responsible for both the authorisation and the supervision of CASPs, not only the supervision,” she told Cointelegraph.
The proposal still requires approval from the European Parliament and the Council, which are currently under negotiation.
If adopted, ESMA’s role in overseeing EU capital markets would more closely resemble the centralized framework of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a concept first proposed by European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde in 2023.
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EU plan to centralize licensing under ESMA creates crypto and fintech slowdown concerns
The proposal to “centralize” this oversight under a single regulatory body seeks to address the differences in national supervisory practices and uneven licensing regimes, but risks slowing down overall crypto industry development, Elisenda Fabrega, general counsel at Brickken asset tokenization platform, told Cointelegraph.
“Without adequate resources, this mandate may become unmanageable, leading to delays or overly cautious assessments that could disproportionately affect smaller or innovative firms.”
“Ultimately, the effectiveness of this reform will depend less on its legal form and more on its institutional execution,” including ESMA’s operational capacity, independence and cooperation “channels” with member states, she said.
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The broader package aims to boost wealth creation for EU citizens by making the bloc’s capital markets more competitive with those of the US.
The US stock market is worth approximately $62 trillion, or 48% of the global equity market, while the EU stock market’s cumulative value sits around $11 trillion, representing 9% of the global share, according to data from Visual Capitalist.
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