PM May Regret His Tax Claim After Treasury Rubbishes It

James Bowler, the most senior civil servant in the Treasury, may have just hammered the final nail into a misfiring Tory general election campaign.

- DAVID MADDOX & KATE DEVLIN

With Labour more than 20 points ahead in most polls and the Conservatives heading for fewer than 100 seats, there was a sense of desperation for Rishi Sunak ahead of Tuesday’s televised debate. It was a do-or-die situation.

Well, he did and now the party may die. Mr Sunak’s team alighted on the threat of a £2,000 tax rise for every household as one of his two main attack lines. And, on the night, it worked.

It worked because it took Sir Keir Starmer 26 minutes even to attempt to deny the accusation. That lack of fleet-footedness meant that the headlines this morning in many cases were about Labour’s £2,000 tax rise. But this was less a killer blow and much more a pyrrhic victory for the prime minister, who had claimed on air to the nation that the figures had been verified by the Treasury.