Guido notes the Treasury team has been filled with aspirational tax cutters after Rishi’s Blue Wall recalibration. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury is a key role when it comes to spending, so it is good to see Laura Trott co-authored a report in 2021 arguing for “Accelerator Zones” across the UK which would, among other things, feature zero capital gains tax on investment. The report’s second author was Bim Afolami, who has just been appointed Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Afolami appeared at an Adam Smith Institute TNG event last month to argue for a youth-focused low-tax Tory shift. Low-tax Cameronites…
Meanwhile the new Financial Secretary to the Treasury Nigel Huddleston has defended high earning taxpayers in 2016 by pointing out “top 1% pay 28% of all income tax and top 3,000 pay as much as lowest 9 million”. Huddleston was fiery in his defence of corporation tax cuts in 2018, saying: “I repeat, tax revenue matters more than tax rates. Populist calls for massive tax hikes will result in less money for the NHS and public services, not more“. Guido looks forward to seeing their strong low-tax leanings reflected in the Autumn Budget now inflation has halved…
Delighted to welcome @HuddlestonNigel to the team at CCHQ as a Vice-Chairman. He will be supporting our @Young_Tories movement.
— Brandon Lewis (@BrandonLewis) February 11, 2019
Strange appointment of a Tory Vice-Chairman for Youth, Nigel Huddleston, who is 48 years-old and therefore closer to retirement age than his graduation. Usually the appointment goes to a younger MP, even stranger is that he is a divisive factional figure. He is on the wet side of the party, a patron of the TRG and an anti-Brexit campaigner. The youth wing of the party is very keen on Brexit and most young members would lean towards the free market rather than the Blairite end of the spectrum. An altogether bemusing throw-back appointment when right-of-centre millenials are attracted to the exciting and dynamic politics of the future…
