Allies of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss clashed on Tuesday over the best way to tackle the cost of living crisis, as the two Tory leadership contenders prepared for their first hustings event with party members in the ‘Red Wall’.
Minister for London Paul Scully, a supporter of Ms Truss, accused Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who is backing Mr Sunak, of going “OTT” after he used an article in The Times to claim that the Foreign Secretary’s plan to prioritise tax cuts would be “electoral suicide”.
But Mark Harper, a former Tory chief whip who is a key ally of Mr Sunak, backed Mr Raab, insisting Ms Truss’s plan would be “enormously damaging” to the party’s prospects of being re-elected.
The latest ‘blue-on-blue’ attacks came as the candidates head to the north east market town of Darlington, for the fifth of 12 hustings events, with some of the 160,000 Tory party members who will choose their next leader and the country’s prime minister on September 5.
It is the first time since the nationwide contest began that the contenders have faced members in one of the Tories’ so-called ‘red wall’ seats - constituencies in the north and Midlands which turned from Labour to the Tories in the 2019 general election, mainly because of Brexit.
With millions of households now facing what former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown called a “financial timebomb” when the Ofgem energy price cap rises again in October, the rivals for No10 are under growing pressure to say how they would deal with the crisis.
Mr Sunak announced on Monday night that he stood ready to offer more direct support to households in the form of rebates and payments once the energy price cap for October is set later this month. Analysts on Tuesday predicted it could rise to more than £3,500 from the April level of £1,971.
But in an interview with the Financial Times at the weekend, Ms Truss said she preferred tax cuts to “handouts” though her team insist she hasn’t ruled out further direct support.
Mr Scully repeated that Ms Truss would look at “what more we can do” but rounded on Mr Raab and Mr Harper, saying that such stark language was “unhelpful”.
“I don’t think this sort of language, of ‘electoral suicide’ and all these kind of things is helpful in any way,” the Sutton and Cheam MP told Sky News.
“We’ve gone a little bit OTT in terms of the approach. I would rather both camps just concentrated on what they are doing. And yes, scrutinise the others, that’s fine, but we’ve got to keep within the tram lines and remember we are one party.”
Mr Raab’s outspoken intervention raised tensions between the two camps with just under four weeks of campaigning left to go until the winner is announced next month.
In his article he wrote: “If we go to the country in September with an emergency budget that fails to measure up to the task in hand, voters will not forgive us as they see their living standards eroded and the financial security they cherish disappear before their eyes.
“Such a failure will read unmistakably to the public like an electoral suicide note and, as sure as night follows day, see our great party cast into the impotent oblivion of opposition.”
Asked whether he agreed with Mr Raab’s comments, Mr Harper said: “I do...if she [Ms Truss] were elected, and she wasn’t to help the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, which is what she said..she’s said she’s not going to give them direct support. That I think that will be enormously damaging to our prospects. The Conservative Party has to be rooted in reality.”
But despite calls from the CBI business group and Mr Brown for the two contenders to agree a plan now to help with the crisis, Mr Harper said that he didn’t think that was going to happen. No10 also yesterday ruled out immediate action saying it was a matter for Boris Johnson’s successor.
“Very clearly there’s a fundamental difference of opinion between the two leadership candidates,” Mr Harper added.
