Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated today that Chancellor Rishi Sunak will have to cut taxes later this year, predicting a ‘global crisis’ akin to the 1930s.
Mr Sunak would have to cancel his planned six-percentage-point increase in Corporation Tax, according to the ex-Labour premier, who was also Chancellor for ten years in the New Labour government.
Mr Brown also stated that the Treasury must do more to assist Britons in dealing with the rising cost of petrol during the cost-of-living issue.
He argued that the rate of inflation could potentially be greater than the Bank of England’s projection of 1%.
And he lamented how the globe is ‘leaderless’ in the face of a crisis he compared to the outbreak of World War II.
Mr Sunak indicated in last year’s Budget that Corporation Tax would rise six percentage points from 19 percent to 25 percent in 2023.
Following the government’s massive spending during the Covid epidemic, he maintained that this was necessary.
Senior Conservatives, on the other hand, backed Boris Johnson this week in pressuring the Chancellor to reject the proposed hike.
It came after reports that the Prime Minister was planning a “major confrontation” with Mr Sunak over the raise.
Mr Brown was asked if he thought that tax cuts were a route out of the cost-of-living crisis and the imminent possibility of economic disaster on the BBC’s Sunday Morning show.
‘I suppose what the Government will have to do in the Autumn is forsake its business tax hike,’ the ex-PM responded.
‘I anticipate they won’t be able to implement the fuel tax hike since it will add to inflationary pressures.’
Mr Brown also argued the government had a “problem” by proposing a 1p reduction in the basic rate of income tax in 2024 while simultaneously promising “better public services.”
He stated that the cost-of-living situation required a “fair set of answers.”
‘I am shocked by the fact that so many families and so many children are going to be forced into poverty during this winter, despite Chancellor Sunak’s proposals last month,’ the former Labour leader added.
‘I see millions of families in poverty, and millions of children going to school ill clad and hungry, people are unable to afford to put up their heating.
‘Something has got to be done about this. And it has to be done in a far fairer way than the previous three budgets.’
Mr Brown asked world leaders to work together to find common answers to the inflation challenge, but argued that the world was currently “leaderless.”
He urged Mr Johnson to convene a meeting of world leaders to “concoct a plan that handles in a concentrated and comprehensive way that can bring down energy costs, get food supply moving throughout the world, and get inflation under control.”
Mr Brown compared the current global situation to the ‘devil’s decade’ of the 1930s in a piece for the Mail on Sunday.
‘We’ve got protectionism, we’ve got war in Europe, we’ve got a form of jingoism and nationalism in different countries, pursuing their own selfish interests, and we’re in danger of having a global recession,’ he added in his BBC interview.
‘So we have to face up to these problems.’