A group of Conservative lawmakers has written to Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt demanding he cut spending on diversity and equality measures, and reduce taxes instead.
According to the Telegraph Saturday, the Conservative Way Forward will release a report Monday attacking government plans to spend 7 billion pounds of public money on “politically motivated and divisive activities.”
In a further sign that party discipline is unraveling, Tory MP Lee Anderson wrote in the Mail on Sunday that Rishi Sunak’s administration was losing control of immigration. Anderson, who was elected to Parliament in 2019 in a traditionally Labour-supporting area, said he was putting the party “on notice” for failing to generate enough benefits off the Brexit vote three years earlier.
“We voted to take back control of our money, law and borders. Well, this small boats fiasco has shown that we’ve lost control of all three,” he wrote, in a reference to the number of migrants making the often perilous journey across the Channel into England.
Even with a working parliamentary majority of almost 70, Sunak is struggling to get his policies as far as the debating chamber. After 12 years in power, his party is riven by the competing demands of varying factions, from MPs demanding a radical plan for economic growth to those concerned about the country’s highest tax burden in generations.