Boris Johnson set to take No Deal Brexit off the table in election manifesto as Business Sec hints at tax cuts

BORIS Johnson is poised to take a no-deal Brexit off the table and offer tax cuts as part of the Conservative election manifesto.

In a step away from his previous “do or die” Brexit pledge Mr Johnson will now focus attention on “getting Brexit done immediately” by pushing his deal through the Commons after the general election in December.

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The move is thought to try to capture the centre ground and appeal to soft Liberal Democrat voters who have concerns over holding a second EU referendum.

In an interview with , Nicky Morgan, the outgoing Culture Secretary, said: “If you vote Conservative at this election, you’re voting to leave with this deal, and no-deal has been effectively been taken off the table.”

It is also thought the party’s manifesto, expected to be published in a fortnight, will also commit to tax cuts and breaks.

These include:

• a pledge to continue the fuel duty freeze
• extending free childcare for three and four-year-olds
• a rise in the threshold at which people start paying national insurance
• raise the threshold for the 40p rate of income tax from £50,000 to £80,000

The Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom told the party would “let people keep more of their pay, see wages rising and job prospects improving”.

On the issue of whether income tax is too high, she said: “A Conservative government will always be a tax-cutting government.

“We have raised the personal tax free allowance to let people keep much more of their own hard-earned cash. We will set out more in the manifesto about our ambition for income taxes.”

In September the Chancellor Sajid Javid unveiled a £13.4billion giveaway to help fund the government’s commitments to 20,000 extra coppers, a hospital building programme and reversing school budget cuts.

Concerns though have been raised in Cabinet over the need to “trade-off” the demand for public spending against tax cuts.

One source told the paper: “We can’t have both. There has to be a balance.”

The manifesto is also thought to contain a strong commitment to law and order with the Home Secretary Priti Patel thought to be set to play a major role in the election campaign.

A source said: “There will be a hard Home Office edge to the manifesto.

“The polling shows that Labour are seen as weak on law and order from being pretty level at the last election.”

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Polling figures shown to the Cabinet indicated he Tories were narrowly ahead of Labour on the NHS after a series of pledges to build hospitals and invest billions of pounds in the service.

The forthcoming manifesto is thought to be “slimmed down” and “far clearer” than the last one in 2017 under Theresa May which backfired after controversial reforms to social care were forced through that critics labelled a “dementia tax”.

A source told the paper: “This is about putting money in people’s pockets.”

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