Budget 2024 live: Jeremy Hunt hopes tax cuts will boost Conservative fortunes

2p cut to national insurance already reported and further tax cuts may come as chancellor announces spring budget

There has been a lot of commentary (eg here) over the last 24 hours about how cutting national insurance by 2p in the pound is unlikely to help the Tories because they tried that in the autumn statement and their poll ratings have not budged. But, as Stephen Bush points out in his Inside Politics briefing for the Financial Times, this argument ignores an important factor motivating Rishi Sunak. Bush says:

So how successful was the 2p tax cut? In terms of the Conservative-Labour battle, not at all. Since the last fiscal statement, the polls have if anything worsened for the Conservative party. On Monday, polling by Ipsos put Tory support at 20 per cent, the lowest level since its survey began in 1978. The Conservatives have lost three by-elections on the bounce. But in terms of the internal battle within the Tory party, the national insurance cut has done its job, in that Rishi Sunak is still prime minister.

That’s the important political context to understand when Hunt will essentially try to do the same thing with a further 2p cut in national insurance. He will also hope that scrapping the “non-dom” tax regime will cause problems for Labour.