Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt make promises that are too good to be true

Rishi Sunak’s rivals are getting away with incredible tax-and-spend plans, writes John Rentoul

Sunak and Truss adopted positions that allowed Penny Mordaunt to take the middle way (EPA)

In two sentences in the Conservative Home hustings, Liz Truss spent £54bn a year, confirming her leading role as the most fiscally irresponsible of the candidates. In one sentence she listed the tax cuts to which she is committed: reversing the rise in national insurance contributions, a temporary moratorium on the green levies on energy bills, and not raising corporation tax next year.

That is £27bn of lower revenue from year one of a Truss government. Later in the hustings, she confirmed that she would raise defence spending to 3 per cent of national income. That is £27bn of higher spending, although at her campaign launch on Thursday she said that would be “by the end of the decade”, so in eight years’ time.

Some of these costs are obscured by Rishi Sunak’s tendency to raise taxes and cut them at the same time, so it is worth spelling out quite how spendthrift Truss’s plans are. Sunak put national insurance up by £17bn a year in April this year, but then cut contributions by £6bn a year in July, when he raised the threshold at which employees start to pay. Truss wants to reverse the whole of the rise, including the rise in employers’ contributions, which would cost £11bn a year.