Richard Tice, leader of the rebranded Brexit Party, Reform UK, has proposed a bold, tax-cutting strategy to tackle the cost of living and inflation crisis.
Chastising Britain’s governing Conservative (Tory) Party in general and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak — or alternatively, “Rishi Corbyn” or “Comrade Sunak” — for “not cutting taxes” and “not cutting unnecessary regulation” as the tax burden is at its heaviest and growth at its lowest for seven decades, Tice outlined an emergency recovery plan analysed by Wallbrook Economics.
Contrary to the prevailing establishment narrative that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the associated Russo-Western sanctions war is the primary driver of the inflation crisis, Reform UK’s analysis argued that it has been largely self-inflicted.
The populist-leaning party cited such long-term contributing factors such as a “decade of interests near zero per cent”, large-scale “quantitative easing” injections of money into the economy by the state, and the “huge cost” of the net zero green agenda on energy prices, as well as more recent, acute issues such as successive coronavirus lockdowns.
Mr Tice, a co-founder of the Leave.EU and Leave Means Leave campaigns during the EU referendum and the subsequent, ultimately years-long campaign to ensure mostly anti-Brexit politicians actually executed the people’s vote to leave the bloc, proposed a range of measures including using new Brexit powers to abolish Value Added Tax (VAT) on domestic energy bills, scrapping green levies on energy bills, cutting fuel taxes, and raising the threshold at which income tax is paid from £12,571 to £20,000, among other things.
“These plans will reduce the cost of living, as a one-off, by over 4 per cent (almost half the [Office for Budget Responsibility’s] inflation forecast) while providing a circa £2,100 per year average saving for all households earning over £20,000,” the recovery plan states.
Tice also took aim at endemic public sector waste — citing the Governor of the Bank of England allegedly squandering £200,000 hiring an external consultant to come up with a mission statement for his staff as one example among many — and the Johnson administration’s reluctance to make use of the “shale gas treasure” beneath its feet as key problems holding back growth.
He said he would be happy for the Tories to “nick” his ideas, stressing that the country cannot wait years for the next election before action is taken and that it is not important to him who does so, provided the people feel the benefits of it.
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