Liz Truss received a fresh boost on Monday with the minister for London declaring for her campaign as Tory party members were set to start voting in the contest to choose Britain’s next Prime Minister.
Writing in the Evening Standard, Paul Scully said he was backing the Foreign Secretary over former chancellor Rishi Sunak because “her bold and ambitious economic plan is just the remedy that we need” and would be a “boon” for the capital.
In a swipe at Mr Sunak, who was coming under renewed fire for “flip flopping” over tax cuts, Mr Scully added that Ms Truss “knows that we need to depart from the business as usual economic managerialism that has led to our sluggish economic growth”.
The Sutton and Cheam MP’s backing of Ms Truss comes after Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi became the latest senior Conservative to support her bid to be Prime Minister after the high-profile endorsements of Defence Secretary Ben Wallace last week and Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat and former Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis over the weekend.
Ms Truss has now won the support of 10 members of Boris Johnson’s former cabinet while Mr Sunak has picked up four former cabinet colleagues. On Sunday night the leader of the One Nation group of Tory MPs, Damian Green, a former senior minister in Theresa May’s government, announced he was backing Mr Sunak.
With the 160,000 party members who will decide the contest receiving their ballot papers from Monday, Mr Sunak and Ms Truss were preparing to make their latest direct pitches to activists at the second of 12 campaign hustings events in Exeter this evening.
In a bid to close the gap on Ms Truss, who is ahead in early polling of party members, the former Chancellor has announced “radical” plans to slash income tax to 16p in the pound by the end of the next parliament, which could be in December 2029.
But coming days after Mr Sunak pledged to cut VAT on energy bills to ease the cost-of-living crisis, Ms Truss’s supporters accused the former chancellor of another U-turn on tax. He has previously said immediate tax cuts would risk stoking inflation and accused Ms Truss of “fairytale” economics with her commitment to scrap a planned rise in corporation tax from next year and to reverse April’s rise in National Insurance.
Speaking this morning, Mr Sunak rejected claims that he had announced the tax cut plan to try to claw back ground on Ms Truss. “This is entirely consistent with what I’ve been saying for a long time,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Mr Sunak has insisted it builds on his previously-announced 1p cut to income tax in April 2024.
In comments to the Standard, he added: “Throughout this leadership contest, you will have heard contrasting opinions on how we deal with the enemy that is inflation. I firmly believe that unfunded tax cuts are not the answer. Whilst they might provide a short-term sugar rush, in the long-term adding to borrowing will only serve to make inflation worse and keep it rooted in our system for longer.”
Mr Sunak also defended his decision to resign as chancellor last month amid disagreements with Mr Johnson on economic policy and concerns over standards in government following the partygate storm and a series of sleaze controversies. Allies of Mr Johnson have accused Mr Sunak of stabbing the Prime Minister in the back.
Mr Sunak accused former Cabinet colleagues of having a “rose tinted” view of the last days of Mr Johnson’s government. He said: “I do think there is a risk that people are looking at the last few months of the Government with slightly rose-tinted glasses about what it was really like, because it wasn’t working as it should and crucially, the Government found itself on the wrong side of a very serious ethical issue.
“For me things were also going down the wrong economic path. That’s why in the end, more than 60 Members of Parliament at last count, I think, resigned from the Government. If people want to have rose-tinted spectacles about what was going on in government, that’s up to them, but they have to recognise it.”
With the leadership contest still dominated by the clear divide between the two rivals on the economy and fiscal policy, Mr Scully used his article in the Standard to say Ms Truss’s plans would boost London’s economy.
“She will grasp the benefits of Brexit to unleash the City’s enormous untapped potential. She will ensure that every rule our businesses have to follow is appropriate to Britain. Each EU regulation that doesn’t work for our businesses or services industries, and holds back our economic growth, should be scrapped.
“Liz will do this. Liz understands that we can’t tax our way to growth, and will turn things around by unshackling the City with lower taxes and supply-side reform. Lower business taxes and a simpler tax system are what London and our world-leading financial services need.”
