JEREMY Hunt today risked fury after he suggested he’d saved the NHS when he was health secretary.
The Tory party wannabe also ruled out an early general election until Brexit was delivered.
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He was speaking after the latest Tory leadership hustings event in Carlisle, which was also attended by Boris Johnson.
Mr Hunt said he’d “fought to improve patient safety and deliver the cash boost that will secure our NHS for the future” before he was moved to his current role as Foreign Secretary.
The comments are likely to provoke a backlash among NHS campaigners and professionals who were heavily critical of Mr Hunt when he was in charge of healthcare.
Junior doctors were involved a four year dispute with him over pay and conditions, which included unprecedented walkouts.
I promise you this as a campaigner, as your prime minister I will not take us into an election
PM hopeful Jeremy Hunt
Hunt had told Tory rank and file that the Conservatives could not win a general election before the UK has successfully split from Brussels.
He said: “I promise you this as a campaigner, as your prime minister I will not take us into an election until we have done two things.
“First of all get more young people to vote Conservative.
“We can’t be the party of aspiration unless we get the most aspirational people in our country supporting us and that is a big, big change, we need to do that, and I have got the policies to make that happen.
“Secondly, we need to be absolutely clear that we will not provoke a general election until we have left the European Union.
‘”We cannot go back to the people and ask for another mandate until we have delivered the mandate that they gave us last time.”
Hunt slammed Mr Corbyn as “anti-British” and “ruthless — and compared him as the “crocodile lurking under the surface of British politics”.
He said: “We must not let him in.”
Meanwhile Johnson claimed he was more a “Ian Botham” rather than Theresa May’s cricketing hero Geoffrey Boycott.
The comparison was a coded attack on May because Boycott was famed for his slow and methodical approach while “Beefy” Botham was a flamboyant all-rounder.
When asked by host LBC’s Iain Dale if the UK will get the “100 per cent full-on Boris as prime minister” or whether he will feel constrained in Downing Street.
Mr Johnson said: “I think that there is one way to do this thing now, if I may venture a cricketing metaphor, I think we’ve had quite a lot of Boycott on the wicket and it is time for Botham to come in.
“That is my view.
“Particularly in the EU negotiations, we cannot have the same old, same old. We cannot have a can-kicking approach.
“We kick the can, we will kick the bucket, we’ve got to get on and do this.”
Bookmaker Coral said Hunt remains the outsider in the race for Number 10 at 5/1 with Mr Johnson now 1/8 with the bookies.
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