Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have laid out dubious visions of how they would govern Britain, with tax-hiking Sunak promising tax cuts – someday – and “right-wing” Truss promising to bring in even more migrant workers.
Sunak, until recently outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, has played a key role in raising Britain’s tax burden to its highest in 70 years, and has promised further tax hikes if he wins the premiership — but, with his leadership bid failing, he now says he will slash income tax… in 2024.
“I want to make sure we can pay for it, and I want to make sure we can do it while growing the economy,” Sunak told the BBC.
Truss has argued that her tax cuts, aimed at things like fuel duty, would not be inflationary, and that Sunak’s high-tax regime would stifle growth by causing the country to enter a recession.
While tax-hiking Sunak claims he will reduce the basic rate of income tax, his ostensibly “right-wing” rival has followed claims she will expand the government’s unimplemented policy of transferring illegal migrants to Rwanda.
This comes with a commitment to increase the number of low-wage foreign workers even further, allowing in thousands more migrants to work the country’s farms despite legal immigration already being extremely limited.
During the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, the government introduced a scheme to allow more Britons to work in agriculture, but it was sabotaged by bosses who listed job requirements such as fluency in Romanian, effectively barring British applicants from being hired.
Other burdensome conditions imposed on allegedly “lazy” Britons included being required to live in often shabby, shared on-site accommodation rather than being allowed to travel into work, separating would-be workers from their families — and, most importantly, allowing bosses to reduce their wage bill by charging for the accommodation.
British applicants who own caravans and mobile homes were also told they would not be allowed to stay in them. Rather than address these concerns, the Conservative government scrapped the scheme and increased visas for low-wage workers from other countries, including Belarus and Russia.