Rishi Sunak has set a trap for Labour at the next election

Pain now, jam and a tax cut tomorrow: John Rentoul on the chancellor’s plan to win in 2024

The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves (PA)

Rishi Sunak may or may not be prime minister by then, but he has set out the terms on which the next general election will be fought. There was something almost retro about the obsession with the basic rate of income tax – which has bedevilled British politics since Margaret Thatcher’s time – but that is what the 2024 election will be about.

Gordon Brown once raged at Tony Blair that he had “stolen my effing Budget” by pre-announcing a big rise in NHS spending in 2000. It was a mark of Sunak’s desperation today that he stole his own Budget for the autumn of next year, announcing now a cut in income tax to come into effect in April 2024, the month before the most likely date of the next election.

Perhaps he doesn’t expect to be chancellor by then, in which case he may as well try to take credit for the tax cut in advance. But the greater significance is that it will be a challenge to Labour. Sunak cannot be sure when the election will be or who will lead the Conservatives into it. The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill is about to receive the royal assent, which means that whoever is prime minister will have the power to decide the date of the election. The Tories want to have the option of going to the country next year, although 2024 is still more likely.