Red wall seats are being put at risk by ‘cavalier’ tax cuts, Liz Truss warned
Liz Truss is being warned that she risks abandoning a winning coalition of voters in the “red wall” as she pursues “cavalier” tax cuts, amid revelations that her giveaway package disproportionately benefits more traditional Conservative heartlands.
With huge nervousness among MPs over the £45bn tax-cutting package announced on Friday, including abolition of the top rate tax band and the end of the bankers’ bonus cap, several Conservatives said they feared the new prime minister has already shifted away from the levelling up agenda that helped secure red wall seats from Labour in the Midlands and north of England.
Households in London and south-east England will gain three times as much as those in the north from tax cuts next year, according to a Resolution Foundation analysis.
Northern Tory MPs, including those in red wall seats, are planning to meet early this week to discuss their response to Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini budget”. While there is a determination to give Truss and Kwarteng time to sell their radical plan, concerns are already emerging.
“Abandoning a voter coalition that won us a majority of 80 in pursuit of trying to win all seven libertarian voters in the country is certainly a bold move,” said one despairing Tory MP. Another senior Tory said: “I told Liz before that in areas like this it would be difficult to sell a free market, free enterprise approach when they have had a protective blanket thrown round them during the pandemic and since, with energy bills.”
Lord O’Neill, a former Tory Treasury minister who advocated investment in the north under David Cameron’s government, said he feared the package was “blue wall focused” – a reference to traditional Tory seats now under threat from the Liberal Democrats and
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