George Bridges, former Brexit minister, writing in The Telegraph…

“Ministers say the Conservatives are a tax cutting party, but they are putting taxes up. They say they want a smaller state, but they want to spend more on levelling up. They say they are on the side of business, but are raising National Insurance on employers. They say their party is compassionate, but benefits will rise by about 3.1%, while inflation is set to hit 9%.

The government’s incoherence and confusion stems from a deep-seated malaise within the Conservative Party itself. Since 1997, gradually and at times imperceptibly, many Conservatives have acquiesced to the political consensus that the steady rise in state spending and taxes is somehow inevitable, and that reversing this trend would be politically unpopular. Rather than focusing on cutting taxes, the Party has extolled the virtues of government “investment”. Other Conservatives disagreed, but for years the cracks were papered over.”