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Rishi Sunak took a big risk tonight by agreeing to a one-on-one interview with Andrew Neil on Channel 4 News. As Katie Balls says in our Reactions podcast, more often than not politicians crawl out of Neil’s interviews. At best, they hope to survive them.
Tonight, Sunak faced the most detailed grilling of his economic agenda since the leadership race began. There was very limited time for Sunak’s personal stories or the rehearsed slogans that both candidates tried to repeat during the campaign. Instead, it was a serious review of Sunak’s plan to stick with tax increases and fiscal restraint.
Neal’s main questions were about timing and priorities: Nobody is asking you to borrow much more money, he told Sunak, but why push for tax increases when the entire West is heading into recession. Sunak insisted that he was doing what was necessary from a fiscal point of view to control inflation – almost in double digits. “Inflation will make everyone poorer,” Sunak said. “A recession will also make everyone poorer,” Neal countered.
There was also a very interesting framework of the current tax burden showing two different sides of the debate. Neil pointed out that Rishi Sunak’s tax burden had jumped to a 72-year high; and that the former chancellor decided to make lower-paid workers cover the extra funding for the NHS and social care through a national insurance levy, exempting wealthier pensioners from payments that would disproportionately benefit them.
Sunak countered that he had been an ally of the low-paid during his time at the Treasury, citing “the two million lowest-paid people moving from universal credit to work” who now benefit from his changes to the universal credit cap (as and from more recent changes to the NI threshold).
Tonight’s interview also raised questions about the difference between changing circumstances and direct U-turns. Neil suggested that in terms of windfall taxes and energy VAT cuts, Sunak’s tax strategy falls firmly in the latter camp. But Sunak insisted those policy changes only come as new circumstances arise — including how long oil and gas companies will enjoy higher profits and how much energy bills could rise this fall. Notably, Sunak described cutting VAT on energy bills as one of the “only levers left” to pull to help this particular area of the cost of living crisis: a reminder of the limited options policymakers have , when the Bank of England is the one that controls interest rates and can do the most to curb inflation.
For most questions, Sunak had to give a long list of answers, even if he faced heavy scrutiny for them. The only exception to this was a very pointed question from Neil about asylum seekers: was there anything “unpleasant”, he asked, about Sunak – who comes from an immigrant family – wanting to turn away asylum seekers with a valid claim to come to the UK. Sunak has given up on the answer we’ve heard before – that his family came to the UK legally – while other migrants don’t. But it was clear that Neil was asking Sunak about people with legitimate claims to seek asylum in the UK. On that question, Sunak didn’t give much of an answer, other than the blunt revelation that he thinks these decisions should be “sovereign” and not determined by international standards.
Everything Sunak was thought to have truly survived tonight’s interview. But is survival enough? He agreed to the roasting in an attempt to make up for his lagging in the polls among rank-and-file Tories; by his own admission he is behind Liz Truss. Tonight’s interview provided plenty of interesting discussion, as well as a reminder that – agree with him or not – Sunak can hold his own when it comes to debating the economy. But voters will be made aware of these credentials. The bigger question, soon to be revealed in the polls, will be whether he has managed to capture hearts and minds.
Hear Kate Andrews talk to Katie Balls and Max Jeffrey about the interview in the latest episode of Coffee House Shots:
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