Liz Truss today finally broke cover as the contest to be next Prime Minister almost immediately descended into six weeks of blue-on-blue warfare.
Fresh from cracking open champagne on the Commons terrace last night, the Foreign Secretary drew battle lines between herself and Rishi Sunak as she agreed to her first broadcast interviews since the campaign began.
Ms Truss got through to the final two last night after ousting Penny Mordaunt by eight MPs’ votes amid dirty tricks claims. The pair face two TV interviews and a dozen Tory member hustings before the new PM takes office on September 6.
Ms Truss has pledged to announce an avalanche of cuts on day one - to reverse a National Insurance hike, cancel a corporation tax rise, pause £153-a-home green levies on energy bills, raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030, and bring in an emergency Budget and spending review.
But in an eyebrow-raising interview on the BBC, she admitted her tax cuts will cost around £30billion a year and refused to say in detail how they’ll be funded.
She simply insisted they “are affordable within our current fiscal rules.. we would still see debt falling after three years”.
And asked if a single leading economist thinks cutting taxes with borrowed money won’t raise inflation, she named just one - Patrick Minford.
He is often quoted by Brexiteers and once claimed a no-deal Brexit would bring a £135bn boost to the economy.
The Boris Johnson loyalist also admitted she “wanted Boris to carry on as Prime Minister” because he “did a fantastic job” in the 2019 election.
Asked how that affected her judgement, she told Radio 4’s Today programme: “My judgement was he admitted he made a mistake... or several mistakes over the course of the last year.
“But the positive side of the balance sheet was extremely positive.”
She also said she would not be steaming off the gold wallpaper in Boris and Carrie Johnson’s lavishly redecorated Downing Street flat.
"I'm not gonna have time to be thinking about the wallpaper in No10 because we've only got two years till a general election,” she told GB News.
Ms Truss, whose past is littered with gaffes and a strange 2014 speech about opening up pork markets, said she “pretty direct” and will “bulldoze through frankly the things that need to get done.”
She complained “I don’t accept” she likes to dress like Margaret Thatcher, despite repeatedly copying her outfits and posing like her in a tank.
“It is quite frustrating that female politicians always get compared to Margaret Thatcher while male politicians don’t get compared to Ted Heath,” she told GB News.
In a bid to win over Brexiteer Tories, the ex-Lib Dem Remainer said “I was wrong and I’m prepared to admit I was wrong” on leaving the EU.
She insisted: “Some of the portents of doom didn’t happen and instead we’ve unleashed new opportunities.”
She did not list any opportunities.
In one amusing moment Ms Truss even got the name of her favourite song wrong - slightly.
She told GB News: “My favourite song is ‘I Wanna Dance’ by Whitney Houston.” The title is I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).
Ms Truss moved to draw dividing lines between herself and Winchester College-educated Chancellor Rishi Sunak by saying she went to comprehensive school.
The former Lib Dem Remainer - who called for the monarchy to be axed aged 19 at the party’s conference - said: “I am not a traditional Tory by background.
“I had left wing parents, I have left wing parents.”
She blasted Mr Sunak’s record on raising taxes, saying in a carefully-worded statement: “What I am not is the continuity economic policy candidate". In that sentence, she did not deny being the continuity candidate in general after Boris Johnson.
In one newspaper she vowed not to attack her rival, but in another she wrote: “We cannot have business-as-usual managerialism on the economy”.
A Truss ally told The Times: “The guns are going to be out. The Treasury became a black hole for policies. They don’t call Liz the human hand grenade for nothing.”
But a Sunak ally told the newspaper: “If you think Liz set up campaign in couple of days you must be mad. She’s a bit weird, and that’s going to come out”.
Mr Sunak last night admitted he was the underdog - despite leading the MP ballot - as polls show members are more likely to back Ms Truss.
Today he channeled Thatcher by name-dropping the ex-PM 11 times in an article, saying: “I am a Thatcherite, I am running as a Thatcherite, and I will govern as a Thatcherite.”
Hinting at a wave of privatisation he said: “I would deliver a set of reforms as radical as the ones Thatcher drove through in the 1980s.”
It came as prominent Penny Mordaunt backer Tobias Ellwood - who had the whip suspended by Boris Johnson for being abroad during a no confidence vote - threw his weight behind Rishi Sunak.
He told Times Radio: "This has been a miserable couple of weeks for the party itself.
“We've not showcased the ideas, the vision, and expressed to the electorate any justification for us to remain in government right now.”
Mr Sunak is due out on Andrew Marr’s LBC show at 6pm tonight.
