Tory MPs should get over their “excess of doom and gloom” about their electoral prospects and “get behind” Rishi Sunak, a cabinet minister has said, with a veiled warning to colleagues jostling for position not to be “self-indulgent”.
The international development minister, Andrew Mitchell, suggested on Sunday that rival groups of Conservative MPs, who have been proposing an array of policy ideas at the party conference in Manchester, should be more disciplined before the election.
He said he struggled to believe that ministerial colleagues were on manoeuvres after Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch were accused of trying to raise their prospects for a post-Sunak future – but said that it would be a “mistake” if they were.
“All this stuff about … people sort of preening themselves on stage, showing off their colourful feathers, I don’t think it’s happening. As you’re about to go into battle you don’t start arguing the toss with the commanding officer,” he said.
“You get on with preparing to win that battle. I don’t think that the Tory party in the country or in parliament would tolerate that sort of self-indulgence at a time we need for our country and our party to win the next election.”
Mitchell, who first became an MP in 1987 and was chief whip under David Cameron, defended the “healthy debate” over policy, with MPs split on a range of issues including tax, culture wars and the UK’s relationship with Europe, but added that it was time to get in line.
“In the end there has to be an esprit de corps in the party which says we are going into battle, we don’t argue with the commander in chief. We get behind them and we win that battle,” he said.
He suggested that after 13 years in power the Tories may have forgotten what it feels like to be in opposition. “Maybe, but I don’t think we should allow ourselves to be reminded,” he said.
As Tory MPs ramp up the pressure on Sunak to cut taxes before the next election, Mitchell said that he made “no apology” for the overall tax burden going up this parliament “given the headwinds which we had to face” with the pandemic and Ukraine war.
He said the government should be “very clear” that it was the Conservatives’ instinct to cut taxes, but warned against raising the money to do this by cutting benefits.
“We need to be very clear that we have very properly protected throughout the last 13 years the most vulnerable by maintaining and in some cases increasing the value of their benefits. That’s the right thing for any government to do in any civilised society.”
Mitchell, who has fought 10 general elections, said he was confident the Tories could still win the next election “if we do the right thing”. But he added: “Of course it is difficult to win five elections in a row in a cricket-playing country that believes in letting the other team have a go.”
Asked about Tory dividing lines before the election, the minister said he was “not very woke” himself, adding: “I think politeness and understanding are the watchwords in this and not pillorying people who hold honest opinion.”
Before he joined Sunak’s government, Mitchell had described the government’s Rwanda policy as immoral, impractical and expensive. He said the plan was “not the whole answer” to fixing the asylum system and he had opposed it principally on cost grounds, although the government has refused to give a total bill.
Safe legal routes to the UK – which Sunak has said will follow once small boats crossings are under control – more staff to process asylum claims, and improving what had been an “appalling” relationship with the French were also all important.
“I’m not sure that Boris’s humour went down as well with the French as it did in some quarters of the UK. And clearly, if you are prime minister, you have got to have a really good relationship with your nearest neighbour,” he said.
Despite about a third of the aid budget last year being spent on housing refugees – meaning £1bn less for causes overseas – Mitchell said it would be a “mistake” to change international rules to prevent that because other countries may do the same. “If we open that Pandora’s box you might never get it shut again.”
Instead, he said he was working with the Treasury to get better value for money on development spending and raising funds through other mechanisms to fund projects, including an imminent announcement about a new malaria vaccine developed in the UK.
Although he had led the Tory rebellion against the foreign aid budget being cut from 0.7% of national income to 0.5%, he said that now he was a minister it was his job to “make the whole thing work as best as it possibly can” and that he accepted the constraints.
He had also opposed the development department being merged with the Foreign Office. “It is true that I had described the merger in lurid terms but that’s not where we are today,” he said. “My job is to make the new structure work. I’m doing my level best.”
Mitchell delicately rejected Suella Braverman’s call to modernise international human rights laws, which earned her a rebuke from the UN refugee agency last week.
“It was created at an entirely different time. But it’s difficult because you have to get the lid back on the Pandora’s box if you open it, because every country will want something different. I’m not saying it’s not a very noble idea to try to reform it, but it will take a long time and it is very difficult,” he said.
