Britain is living through the heaviest tax burden since World War Two. That ought to be the headline in every Budget speech, yet Westminster treats it as regrettable, but unavoidable.
Into this fatalism steps Steve Baker, launching Fighting for a Free Future.
His message is blunt: The state is too large, the taxman too greedy and unless someone draws a line, UK will drift into stagnation.
Baker has always been one of the few MPs willing to call things as they are. On Brexit, he was the organiser when others faffed about.
On lockdown, he broke ranks when it mattered, calling Boris out. Now, with taxes at record highs and a Labour Chancellor freezing tax thresholds until 2028, it is evident he sees the same need for insurgency.
The timing matters. Reform is climbing precisely because voters smell the same staleness in politics that Baker rails against.
The Conservatives meanwhile have allowed themselves to look like stewards of an over-taxed, under-performing state.
Baker’s campaign is therefore more vital than ever if the centre-right, wants to see any results at the next election.
Baker combines the moral clarity of a conviction politician with the scars of actual government service. He knows the Treasury playbook, the tricks of fiscal drag, the inertia of Whitehall.
When he says “enough”, it carries more weight than a thousand petitions.
The test will be whether Fighting for a Free Future stays sharp or blunts into another talking shop. Voters are not fools they know cutting taxes means cutting something else. If Baker ducks that honesty, he’ll be dismissed as just another protest.
But if he can spell out where the axe must fall – wasteful quangos, over-bloated bureaucracy, unproductive subsidies – then his campaign could force a realignment. He might not just influence the debate; he could own it.
The centre-right needs this kind of pressure. A politics that accepts permanently high taxes is not conservative, it is defeatist. Baker is offering an escape route from that defeatism.
Whether his colleagues take it will tell us more about the future of the Conservative Party than any focus group ever will.
Featured image via HM Government.
