LONDON (Reuters) -The opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch on Wednesday made a surprise promise to abolish tax on British people buying their main homes alongside a new “golden rule” to reduce government borrowing through spending cuts.
In a speech at the party’s conference, Badenoch said she would abolish stamp duty on primary residential homes, a transaction tax paid by buyers on properties valued at above 125,000 pounds ($167,537).
The tax, which applies in England and Northern Ireland, is criticised by some economists for disincentivising people from moving and putting a brake on economic growth.
The Conservatives said stamp duty would still need to be paid by people who have more than one home, properties purchased by companies, or by non-British residents.
The pledge was one of many made by Badenoch at the conference after she struggled to convince her party and the public that she could be the next prime minister.
The Conservative Party, the most successful party in British history, is also struggling to restore its reputation for competence after it oversaw a period marred by chaos and division following the 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
Badenoch and her team set out plans to cut 47 billion pounds a year by reducing spending on welfare, aid and the size of the government workforce, with half of all savings being used to reduce Britain’s budget deficit after the national debt soared to almost 100% of the size of the economy in recent years.
The other half would be directed toward tax cuts or spending. She also vowed to scrap net zero targets.
By way of comparison, Prime Minister Keir Starmer scrapped plans to save around 5 billion pounds a year in welfare spending earlier this year in the face of opposition within his Labour Party.
At Labour’s conference last week, Starmer warned about the threat from Nigel Farage’s right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK party, which is currently leading in most opinion polls.
But Badenoch took a different approach and cited a phrase attributed to the playwright George Bernard Shaw: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and a pig likes it.”
($1 = 0.7461 pounds)
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Kate Holton and William Schomberg)
