Shun ‘socialist’ ideas, Frost warns Sunak

RISHI SUNAK must reject “socialist solutions” and an economic status quo that supports greater state intervention to solve Britain’s problems, Lord Frost will say tomorrow.

The former Cabinet minister, who helped negotiate Boris Johson’s Brexit deal and is hoping to become an MP at the next general election, will say that more government involvement in the lives of British people makes it harder to prioritise cutting taxes and spending.

The peer will say that the Prime Minister and his team should resist the drift in Western societies towards “socialist and collectivist solutions”, as ministers seek ways to tackle the challenges presented by the war in Ukraine, the fallout from the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. In a speech to the National Conservative conference in London tomorrow, Lord Frost will say: “We must not fall into the trap of advocating policies which won’t actually solve the country’s problems just because they’re said to be the only ones politically possible.

“It’s our job to change the politics: to persuade voters that the country is on a wrong path, that the socialist and collectivist solutions currently offered won’t work, and that another way forward is not only necessary but practically possible.

“I can’t agree that the only way forward is through the state, public spending, and industrial policy. It slows growth and prosperity, it reduces incomes, so it weakens cohesion, increases social conflict. It’s a blind alley and for Conservatives a distraction from the harder task of getting tax, spend and regulation down.”