The former Chancellor of the Exchequer has said he thinks the party’s manifesto needed ‘something bolder’ to encourage voters to support the party.
Kwasi Kwarteng described the manifesto as ‘cautious’ but said the Prime Minister had made a good attempt at balancing commitments.
Speaking on GB News Kwasi Kwarteng said: “I think that it was very cautious and I saw that Nadeem Zahawi, who was a colleague, and indeed my predecessor as Chancellor, writing in The Daily Telegraph, that we should have looked at scrapping inheritance tax.
“I think there needed to be something bolder, perhaps, something that would actually shift the dial in the campaign.
“Removing NI for the self employed is okay but we tried to get rid of IR35 in the mini budget, which was all reversed. I get where they're coming from but I just think that as a proportion of the working population, the self-employed are a big portion but I think it's something that won't necessarily attract as much attention as some of the other tax cuts that they could have put in the manifesto.
“And of course the manifesto is just that, it's a manifesto. The only time that we will be able to enact it is if we've got a majority which is looking increasingly difficult to imagine.
“If you ask me would we be 20 points behind on average with three weeks to go to the election I would suggest that that was a time when you probably needed to be a little bit bold. But of course after my experience and what happened to Liz Truss, I think there's a natural caution.
“But you've got three and a half weeks so I think it was time to have something bold.
“I think that's a bit silly [to suggest Sunak is ‘cosplaying’ Truss] because firstly what she and I tried to do was much more dynamic, I think. Obviously we've learned our lessons, people have learned their lessons, and I think the manifesto isn't that at all. I think he's made a very good attempt, the Prime Minister, to try and balance the commitments.
“But the problem with all of this is that given what happened last week, given what's going on, this could be regarded as small beer. I think people will have expected something a bit more dynamic.”
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