Both parties are in fantasy land – but Sunak’s tax attack on Labour is rich given what his government has cost voters
Before we get on to any of the numbers – from Rishi Sunak’s claim about Labour raising taxes by £2,000 to the more outlandish numbers going around today – here’s the most important thing you have to know right now.
The parties fighting this election have yet to publish their manifestos. They might come as soon as next week, but until those documents, with their shopping lists of confirmed policies, actually land, we are in a kind of policy no man’s land where each side is guessing (and sometimes plain making up stuff) about what the other side actually wants to implement if they win the election.
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And since all parties like to talk a lot about exciting new things they’d spend money on and not half as much about the taxes they’d raise to pay for all that stuff, it doesn’t take a mathematical whizz to realise that if you take them all quite literally then you can impute some pretty big “black holes” in their plans.
Those “black holes” matter because both Labour and Conservatives have signed up to fiscal rules preventing them from splurging without limit. So if there is a hole, the assumption is it would have to be filled by raising taxes.
However, in the absence of either manifestos or detailed costing plans, the best we can do about all this for the time being is to speculate.
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Does Sunak’s claim about Labour taxes stand up?
That brings us back to the claim Rishi Sunak made in last night’s debate, that Labour will raise everyone’s taxes by £2,000. This is a direct consequence of this information vacuum.
It comes from a “dossier” published by the Tories last month, back before the election was called, which purported to calculate all Labour’s proposed tax and spending plans.
The headline finding from that paper was that over the course of the next four years Labour had roughly £59bn of spending plans (at least as far as the Tories claimed) but only £20bn of revenue raising plans. That leaves a £39bn hole. Divide that £39bn by the number of households in the country (18.4m) and you get a figure of just over £2,000. Voila: £2,000 of unaccounted tax rises or spending cuts which, said Rishi Sunak last night, would inevitably be filled with extra taxes.
Now, there are all sorts of objections to the way the Conservatives have carried out this exercise. For one thing, they deployed a weapon Labour don’t have: because they’re the party of government they were able to ask Treasury civil servants to cost some of the Labour policies (or rather, the policies they think Labour will implement – remember, those manifestos haven’t yet been published!).
Today there has been a backlash – including from the Treasury’s permanent secretary himself – about the way the Tories have portrayed these sums.
What the Tories have already cost households
The £2,000 figure isn’t really a Treasury calculation or for that matter an “independent” one, as Mr Sunak called it last night. It’s a Conservative figure – but it was put together in part with figures commissioned from civil servants.
There were other objections: Labour say many of the policies in that Tory dossier won’t cost half as much as the Conservatives claim.
But actually, surprising as it might sound, what’s most striking about this “bombshell” is how small it really is. Less of a bombshell; more of a hand grenade.
While £2,000 sounds like a big number, it’s actually a cumulative total from four years. A far more representative figure to take from the dossier is £500 – the annual figure.
And while that’s not to be sniffed at (if you believe it – which you probably shouldn’t) it’s far, far smaller than the tax rises we’ve all experienced under this Conservative government since 2019. They amount, all told, to an average of around £3,000 a year per household or, if we grit our teeth and tot it up as the Tories did in their dossier, over £13,000 over the course of the parliament. Which rather dwarfs that £2,000 figure.
Labour attack dossier is even more outlandish
So anyway, you’re probably hoping now we’ve explained the £2,000 from last night that we could leave things there. But sorry, no.
Because, this being the murky pre-manifesto period, Labour have gone one further and produced their own dossier, purporting to show Conservative fiscal plans for the coming years. But while the initial Tory document was somewhat conservative (with a small c) about its numbers, the Labour version is far more outlandish.
It assumes, for instance, that the Conservatives are planning to abolish National Insurance and inheritance tax overnight if they are elected. These are mammoth tax changes which the Conservatives have never committed to (they have made some vague noises about intending to abolish NICs but not in the next parliament).
Anyway, the Labour document takes these and other policies and works out that that would imply a black hole of roughly £70bn a year or a whopping £270bn when you tot up the first four years of the parliament (they actually provide five years of numbers but for the sake of comparability I’m looking solely at the first four years, as the Tories’ dossier did).
Divide that by the number of households (as the Tory document did) and you end up with a grand total over those four years not of £2,000 but of a staggering £14,000 per household.
Parties trading blows in the realms of fiscal fantasy
At this stage, now we’ve completely departed from realistic policy, you’re probably wondering when this silly saga will be over. Sadly the answer is: not yet.
Because having seen the Labour response, the Conservatives produced a second dossier, essentially saying: “Well, if you’re going to make all sorts of outlandish assumptions about the stuff we’ve vaguely talked about then can we have a go too?”
This final dossier includes all sorts of policies no one seriously expects Labour to implement this parliament: cutting corporation tax to 12.5%, scrapping business rates altogether, introducing French-style union laws. Add this all up and you end up with a grand total of £211bn a year or – if you multiply that by four years across a parliament, £844bn. So the best part of a trillion pounds.
We are of course in the realms of fiscal fantasy at this stage, but if you take that cumulative total and divide that by the number of households in the country you end up with an utterly ridiculous figure of £46,000.
Whether either party thinks these dossiers will change anyone’s mind in this election remains to be seen.
Right now they mostly look like an attempt to send economics correspondents completely crazy.
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Both major parties are committed to tax rises
But the overarching point is as follows: both the major parties are committed to tax rises in the coming years. We know as much because the official Office for Budget Responsibility plans will see the tax burden increase sizeably, in large part because the main tax-free allowances are being frozen, ensuring everyone ends up paying more tax, once you adjust for inflation and rising wages.
These tax rises – the long-term consequences of the pandemic and the energy price guarantee – are quite likely to dwarf any measures we hear about in the coming manifestos.
But until we get those manifestos, the rest is, yes, speculation.
An emergency debate will take place in parliament today over Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial appointment of Peter Mandelson as his ambassador to the US.
Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has agreed to allot three hours for questions about what the government, and particular the prime minister, knew and didn’t know about the depth of Lord Mandelson’s relationship with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Lord Mandelson was appointed in January 2025 to the UK’s most senior overseas diplomatic position – the ambassador to the US.
He had always admitted to having known Epstein, but last week the US Congress unveiled the contents of a 50th “birthday book” which revealed a much closer relationship.
Among the tributes to Epstein in it, Lord Mandelson had described him as “my best pal”.
A picture of Epstein and Mandelson together in the ‘birthday book’ released by the US Congress. Pics: US House Oversight Committee
Then, emails published by The Sun and Bloomberg were even more damning, showing the former Labour minister sympathising with the convicted sex trafficker, saying: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.”
Lord Mandelson was removed from his ambassadorial post on Thursday, but not before Sir Keir had defended him at PMQs the day before. He has come under fire over his handling of the issue.
I’m ‘angry’, says PM
On Monday, in his first remarks about the sacking, the embattled prime minister – who earlier this month lost his deputy Angela Rayner to a tax affairs scandal – insisted he would have “never appointed” Lord Mandelson if he’d known then what he knows now.
He told Channel 4 News he was “angry” to have ended up in a situation where he pivoted from defending him to sacking him within 24 hours, suggesting he was unaware of the “detailed allegations” before PMQs.
But questions remain about what exactly the PM – or the vetting team – knew, and the government has declined to release the details of the procedure Lord Mandelson underwent before he was appointed.
The Conservatives hope to use today’s emergency debate to increase pressure on the government to publish all the information – just hours before Donald Trump lands in the UK for a state visit.
The US president is himself embroiled in questions about his own relationship with the disgraced billionaire.
Analysis: No state visit has had a backdrop quite like this
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has granted the emergency debate. Pic: PA
Sir Keir was also hit by the resignation of Number 10’s director of strategy, Paul Ovenden, on Monday. He quit after it emerged he’d sent sexually explicit messages about independent MP Diane Abbott.
It’s all added up to a rotten start to the new parliamentary term for the prime minister, who just two weeks ago confidently declared “phase two” of his government was now under way.
He’s ruled out resigning, despite discontent on his backbenches and Reform UK’s sustained lead in the polls.
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Former PM Gordon Brown rallied to Sir Keir’s defence
But former prime minister Gordon Brown has come to Sir Keir’s defence.
Speaking to Sky News, he said he expected the PM to be “completely exonerated” over the Mandelson scandal.
Mr Brown, the last Labour PM before Sir Keir, said he didn’t want to criticise his judgement because he faces “very difficult decisions”.
Constance Marten and Mark Gordon have been jailed for a total of 28 years after they were convicted of killing their baby.
Marten, 38, who is from a wealthy family, and her partner Gordon, 51, were each handed sentences of 14 years at the Old Bailey on Monday.
Latest updates from the sentencing
They went on the run with their newborn daughter, Victoria, to get away from social services after their four other children were taken into care.
Victoria’s body was found with rubbish inside a Lidl shopping bag in the corner of an allotment in Brighton on 1 March 2023.
The pair had been the subject of a nationwide manhunt for 54 days.
Read more:
Why did Constance Marten and Mark Gordon go on the run?
How the runaway couple killed their baby
Constance Marten and Mark Gordon. Pic: Met Police/PA
‘No genuine expression of remorse’
Judge Mark Lucraft told the pair during sentencing that “neither of you gave much or any thought to the care or welfare of your baby”.
“Your focus was on yourselves,” he said, before adding: “There has been no genuine expression of remorse from either of you.
“Whilst there have been expressions of sorrow about the death throughout, you’ve adopted the stance of seeking to blame everyone else other than yourselves for what happened.”
Sky’s home affairs reporter Henry Vaughan reported that neither showed much emotion during sentencing, and that after they stood up, Gordon stared at Marten as she left the dock.
They were both convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence following a second trial at the Old Bailey.
Constance Marten being interviewed by police.
Pic: Met Police/PA
They had previously been found guilty of perverting the course of justice, concealing the birth of a child, and child cruelty after an Old Bailey trial lasting almost five months.
A second trial was ordered after the first jury failed to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charges.
Marten is now seeking permission to appeal against her conviction for manslaughter. A previous application to appeal her conviction of cruelty to a child was rejected in February this year.
Both trials were hampered by disruption and delays, taking up more than 33 weeks of court time, which – at an estimated £30,000 per defendant a day – could have cost in the region of £10m.
A search for Marten and Gordon was launched after a placenta was found in the couple’s burnt-out car on a motorway in Bolton in January 2023.
Marten said they went on the run so their fifth child would not be removed from them after her other children were “stolen by the state”.
The couple spent vast sums of cash from her family trust fund on taxi journeys as they travelled from Bolton, to Liverpool, to Harwich in Essex, to London and then to Newhaven on the south coast.
Constance Marten and Mark Gordon were captured on CCTV with their baby
Baby’s clothing inadequate, judge says
Prosecutors said the baby was inadequately clothed in a babygrow and that Marten had got wet as she carried the infant underneath her coat, alleging Victoria died from hypothermia or was smothered while co-sleeping.
Judge Lucraft said that while Marten and Gordon claimed they wanted dignity for Victoria’s body, their “conduct showed the opposite”.
He also said the baby had died by 12 January 2023, and that the couple then concealed her and perverted the course of justice before her “decomposed body” was found.
“When you were arrested,” the court heard, “neither of you was willing to give any assistance to the police about the whereabouts of your daughter’s body.
“Your silence at that stage of events is highly significant.”
Police at the allotment where Victoria’s body was found
Met Police Detective Chief Inspector Joanna Yorke, who led the investigation, said the couple’s “selfish actions” resulted in the death of Victoria, “who would have recently had her second birthday and should have had the rest of her life ahead of her”.
She added: “We know today’s sentencing won’t bring Victoria back, but I am pleased our investigation has resulted in the couple who caused her death finally being brought to justice.”
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