UK election: sound and fury follows Tory £2,000 tax claim

With election campaigning in the UK all but paused for D-Day commemorations, the vacuum has been filled by an almighty row over a Tory attack line. During Tuesday’s televised debate, Rishi Sunak repeatedly claimed that Labour would raise household taxes by £2,000.

Keir Starmer was slow to rebut the claim and it dominated the headlines. The next day, the Labour leader was more robust, accusing Sunak of lying. The Tories insisted the claim was based on figures produced by civil servants in the Treasury; Labour then released a letter from senior Treasury official James Bowler confirming that civil servants were not involved.

Fact checkers at FullFact said the claim was “unreliable” and called on the Tories to correct the “high profile falsehood”, noting that it comes at a time when “public trust in politics is hanging by a thread”. 

The Office for Statistics Regulation said it was looking into the use of the £2,000 figure.

So who is telling the truth? The short answer is that until the manifestos are published, nothing can be ruled out. 

But even as she defended the claim, Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, conceded that the claimed Labour tax rise would be £2,000 over four years, not an annual figure. 

Either way, the Tories have summoned the spectre of Labour as a high-tax party, something which shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and others have fought to banish. 

The real figure that matters is probably not even £2,000: it’s 4.8 million. That’s the number of people who tuned in to watch the debate – a fraction of the UK’s voting population and two million lower than in 2019.