More people see Tories as a high tax party than Labour despite National Insurance cuts, poll finds

The impact of fiscal drag and other stealth tax rises ‘have not passed the public by’

More people see the Conservatives as a high tax party than Labour despite further cuts to National Insurance in the Budget, a poll has found.
The survey shows the Tories are perceived as a party of high taxes by almost half of all voters, including two fifths of their own supporters.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last week lowered the rate of employee NI from 10 per cent to eight per cent, matching a similar 2p drop in the autumn.
But the tax burden remains at its highest level since the Second World War and is on track to hit a new post-war high of 37.1 per cent of GDP in 2028.
A More in Common poll of 2,027 British adults, conducted shortly after Mr Hunt unveiled the Spring Budget, found that 48 per cent of people associate the Conservative Party more with high taxes than low taxes.
This number fell to 40 per cent among people who voted Tory at the last election in 2019 but rose to 59 per cent among those who supported Labour.
Thirty-one per cent said they were more likely to associate the Tories with low taxes, while 21 per cent said they did not know.
The Labour Party was also seen as more of a high-tax party despite Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, repeatedly hinting at tax cuts for workers if elected.
Labour was linked with high taxes by 42 per cent of people, while 28 per cent associated them with lower taxes and a further 28 per cent of respondents did not know.
Mr Hunt and Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said it is their “long-term ambition” to abolish NI altogether, although both men have downplayed expectations that this could happen anytime soon.
Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, said: “For the public to be more likely to say that the Conservatives are the party of high tax than the Labour Party is astounding.
“It suggests that the impact of fiscal drag and other stealth tax rises have not passed the public by. This perhaps helps to explain why the Conservatives seem to have almost no post-Budget poll bounce from the Chancellor’s announcement of National Insurance cuts.
“The public simply thinks they’ll end up paying for the cuts elsewhere – something we hear regularly in our focus groups too.”
A lack of wider tax cuts in the Budget prompted a backlash led by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, who called it a “missed opportunity to properly send the message that we are on the side of the British taxpayer”.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, also spoke out to lament that Mr Hunt had not been bolder in cutting both personal tax levels and state spending.
The polling also showed that 50 per cent of adults said they expected the amount of tax they pay to increase in the next few years, while just 13 per cent predicted it would go down.