Lord Frost urges Sunak to cut taxes and ditch David Cameron politics
Lord Frost urges Rishi Sunak to cut taxes and ditch the politics of the David Cameron era in ‘radical’ call to revive Tory fortunes
- The former minister will argue net immigration should be dropped to 100,000
Former Brexit minister Lord Frost will today issue a ‘radical’ call to revive Tory fortunes by slashing taxes, halting the rush to net zero and holding a referendum on the European Convention on Human Rights.
In a call to arms, he will warn that the Government has lost its way and needs to embrace ‘real Conservative’ policies in order to have any hope of defeating Labour.
Lord Frost will acknowledge that the Government has failed to deliver on the promise of Brexit, but will argue that it is not too late to show the public that it has the ideas to transform the country.
In a speech to the Legatum Institute think-tank, he will say: ‘The Brexit referendum was about change. The 2019 Election was about change.
‘We haven’t delivered it, but there is still time to paint a picture of how we want Britain to be different, how we can change the country in the interests of everyone who lives here.’
Rishi Sunak arrives in London yesterday by helicopter
Lord Frost will warn that the Government has lost its way and needs to embrace ‘real Conservative’ policies
Lord Frost – who was Boris Johnson’s former Brexit negotiator – will warn that the Tories have spent too much time ‘playing Westminster politics’ like in the David Cameron era rather than focusing on the country’s problems. And he will urge Rishi Sunak to start ‘showing how things can be different in future. And ensuring we have actual control over the government machine so it can deliver’.
He will issue a ten-point prospectus, which he acknowledges will be seen by some as ‘impossibly radical’. Proposals include reducing the tax burden to the level it was two decades ago, which would require tax cuts worth around £100 billion.
He will call for an end to the race to net zero, saying the 2050 target enshrined in law is unachievable, and calling for the planned phase-out of gas boilers and petrol cars to be axed.
Lord Frost will argue that the country needs to build millions more homes, including on the green belt in the South East – an idea that is anathema to many Tory MPs in the run-up to the next Election.
Net immigration should be slashed from its current level of 600,000 to under 100,000.
And ministers should offer a referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the European Convention on Human Rights.
‘Some of this will sound impossibly radical,’ he will say. ‘This is an indication of how far we have let things drift.
‘There is no point in doing only things which are acceptable to public opinion but which do not solve our actual problems. Instead, we have to set out a way of dealing with our problems and then persuading voters of it.
‘If we want our children to be richer than us, the usual expectation of every generation since the Industrial Revolution, we are going to need to do some radical things.’ Lord Frost was given a peerage by Mr Johnson after negotiating the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU and went on to serve in the Cabinet before dramatically quitting during the pandemic in 2021, citing ‘concerns about the current direction of travel’ of the Government.
He has since established himself as a major figure on the Tory Right. He has announced plans to stand for Parliament as a Conservative candidate, which would require him to give up his peerage if he is elected.
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