Tories copy Reform red tape cuts they created themselves

The Conservatives stand accused of lifting Reform UK policies wholesale and attempting to repair damage they inflicted in office. Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith used the party conference in Birmingham to unveil what he called the biggest deregulation project in a generation, promising to reinvigorate Britain by cutting red tape.

Measures include scrapping so-called polluter pays charges on packaging manufacturers to ease weekly grocery bills and sweeping away gold-plated rules that add roughly fifty thousand pounds to the cost of a new home. Griffith told GB News he would set out how to save taxpayers’ money and let them keep more of what they earn.

Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice hit back hard. He said the Tories were copying policies his party had announced weeks and months earlier, pledging to scrap costs, regulations and taxes they themselves had put in place. They are trying to fix problems they created, Tice declared. Never forget and never forgive.

Griffith insisted the party has changed under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership. Yet Reform had already warned that the Conservatives cannot be trusted on tax, reminding voters the Tories left working people with the highest tax burden since the Second World War and contrasting that record with Reform’s pledge to raise the tax-free personal allowance to fifteen thousand pounds.

In his keynote address Griffith admitted the party had not governed as conservatives while in power. For those who believe in free markets and lower regulation, Britain’s economic difficulty was partly their failure. They had allowed restrictions on everything from the cars people could buy to how they heated their homes. He vowed lower, simpler and fairer taxes would be his North Star, insisting he did not come to raise taxes but to cut them, and only when the books allowed under a golden economic rule.

Plans already listed include scrapping the family farm and family business death tax, removing VAT on independent schools and cutting business rates for hundreds of thousands of pubs and shops. The charge from Reform remains blunt: the Tories are late converts to ideas they once rejected and problems they once caused.