Why the Conservative Party’s manifesto will mean £4,800 more on your mortgage

Why the Conservative Party’s manifesto will mean £4,800 more on your mortgage

The Conservative manifesto is a desperate wish list of £71 billion worth of unfunded promises that will lead to five more years of chaos and £4,800 more on family mortgages.

The last time the Conservatives played fast and loose with the country’s finances, they crashed the economy and the British people are still paying the price. Rishi Sunak presented himself as the antidote to the chaos of Liz Truss, but he has instead become a tribute act, making the same mistakes, with the same likely results. 

The Tories have made £71 billion worth of unfunded promises. However, the money is not there. The Conservatives’ plan will lead to higher borrowing, rising interest rates and £4,800 more on mortgages.

The money’s not there: The Tories’ £71 billion black hole

The Conservatives have made five significant mistakes in their costings:

  1. They claim to have identified £12 billion in savings from the benefits bill, but the vast majority of their proposed changes are already banked in the public finances, and every leading expert disputes the Tories’ ability to deliver savings.
  2. They claim they can fund their pledges through a £6 billion cut in tax avoidance, but their figures omit the £1 billion investment needed to achieve these savings. 
  3. Rishi Sunak’s National Service gimmick costs at least double what they have assumed, because they appear not to have taken full account of the costs for accommodation, training and equipment for 30,000 new recruits every single year. Their figures for compulsory community activities have similar holes, especially given the likely training costs involved in the categories they highlight: special constable, NHS support staff and RNLI volunteers. This means they have spent all of their tax avoidance revenue on this policy alone, before all the others they claim it funds.
  4. The Tories are relying on fantasy savings from universities. They cannot raise £1 billion from scrapping poor performing university courses, because they have not set out plans to cap student places. 
  5. And their non-existent proposal to save money from government agencies comes with no detail whatsoever, a further £1 billion hole in their plans. 

How Tory borrowing will increase your mortgage

With a black hole in their costings, the Tories’ £71 billion worth of unfunded promises would mean an increase in government borrowing. More government borrowing would cause an increase in interest rates. And higher interest rates would cause mortgage rates to rise too.