Rishi Sunak will kick off his leadership campaign on Tuesday with a promise to grip inflation and lower taxes, as speculation mounted over which candidates could swing in behind the former chancellor.
Sunak will promise “a return to traditional Conservative economic values – and that means honesty and responsibility, not fairytales.”
The frontrunner was endorsed on Monday by fellow former chancellor Norman Lamont, who said Margaret Thatcher would have favoured tackling the deficit over tax cuts – and hinted at the approach Sunak could take to slashing public spending.
“To weather the storm requires a high degree of competence, matched by the courage to make really tough decisions. The public understand this better than many politicians and will respond,” Lord Lamont said. “Tax cuts unmatched by spending cuts achieve nothing.”
In his speech, Sunak will say tax cuts now would stoke inflation and increase borrowing. “I have had to make some of the most difficult choices in my life when I was chancellor, in particular how to deal with our debt and borrowing after Covid,” he will say.
In a swipe at colleagues who have denounced tax rises that they voted for in cabinet, he will say: “I certainly won’t pretend now that the choices I made, and the things I voted for, were somehow not necessary. Whilst this may be politically inconvenient, it is the truth.
“My message to the party and the country is simple: I have a plan to steer our country through these headwinds. Once we have gripped inflation, I will get the tax burden down. It is a question of ‘when’, not ‘if’.”
Sunak, who resigned as chancellor last week, will face questions for the first time since the fall of Boris Johnson’s government. MPs across the right of the party fear Sunak could be heading for a coronation as votes splinter between at least four MPs vying to be the “stop Rishi” candidate – Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Liz Truss and Priti Patel.
While other candidates have been across the airwaves and newspapers, Sunak has focused on meeting dozens of MPs to drum up support. His team has briefed he has up to 100 supporters.
That approach is similar to Boris Johnson in 2019, who made few media appearances in the early stages as he held scores of meetings with MPs, briefed by his campaign team on what each individual’s policy concerns were. It subsequently emerged Johnson had made contradictory promises to different MPs.
Sources in several campaign groups reported MPs being “incredibly bullish” about demanding jobs in return for loyalty. Staff with relationships with certain backbenchers were being lined up to collect intel on what the price of their loyalty would be and then prepare briefings for the candidate, who would then take over negotiations about what could be offered.
Key allies of Sunak said they expected to see some of the less experienced candidates fold in behind the former chancellor in the coming days. The campaign that is attracting some of the most interest from MPs is from the former minister Kemi Badenoch, who has an eye-catching endorsement from Michael Gove.
“Kemi’s campaign feels like one that could easily fold neatly into one of the big frontrunners where she becomes a star attraction for them – I’m sure that’s one of Michael’s calculations,” said one veteran MP. “The question is where does it go? It could be the thing that either kills or crowns Rishi.”
Tory MPs said that while horse-trading and discreet promises of job offers in return for their support were already under way, some candidates were being more restrained than others.
“Boris offered people jobs left, right and centre and then found it impossible to come up with the goods,” one Sunak supporter said. “The last thing we need is to make the same mistake of over-promising and underdelivering.”
Sunak is likely to face questions over why he supported Johnson in office for so long before quitting at the end of last week. “Rishi will say how seriously he took the decision to quit – because he knew when he did that it would bring down the government,” one senior MP backing Sunak said.
“That’s no small decision for anyone but when Rishi pulled the trigger, it was over. And you could see that from how many MPs realised it was over when he quit.”
Sunak’s task will be to hold the line on fiscal discipline versus his opponents who have made increasingly outlandish promises on cutting taxation. His backers hope Tory MPs – and then grassroots members – will judge that other candidates’ tax and spending pledges are unrealistic.
“Literally, they’re promising tens of billions of pounds in tax cuts. Not a single one of them can lay out a single spending reduction, apart from ‘efficiency savings’,” said one Sunak-supporting MP.
Another senior Tory agreed the tax cuts bidding war was a gift to Labour. “Many of the candidates are doing things right now that help the opposition,” they said. “It’s ludicrous: they’re pledging things to the membership that will be undeliverable the second they get into government.”
Pointing to a speech in which the Labour leader criticised an “arms race of fantasy economics”, the MP said: “If you look at the way Keir Starmer’s responded this morning: if we run around pretending there are easy answers, and you can make massive savings at no cost, I just think we’re going to destroy our entire economic credibility.”
Tom Tugendhat will also launch his campaign on Tuesday, sounding a note of caution on his rivals’ taxation promises.
In his launch speech, Tugendhat will reiterate he is a “natural tax-cutter” who opposed the rise in national insurance to pay for social care reform. But he will also caution against a focus on tax as the single economic lever.
