Sajid Javid says Liz Truss ‘best placed to unite the party’ in blow to Rishi Sunak
Good morning. Sajid Javid has endorsed Liz Truss as the next Conservative Party leader in a damaging blow to Rishi Sunak’s campaign, claiming that Truss is “best placed to unite the party” at a time when the Tories have “been in not a very good place”.
Javid told LBC this morning:
We need to fix things and to get a new leader in place as quickly as possible. But most importantly, that leader needs to be the right person to deal with the challenges that we have.
He said he had “huge respect” for both Truss and Sunak, who he described as both “incredibly capable and talented”. He added:
Like all Conservative party members, I have to make a choice. My choice is Truss. The reason I’ve made that decision is for three reasons: I think she’s best placed to unite the party and she’s already showing that with the broad support that she’s getting from MPs.
I think she’s got a better plan for fixing the economy. I think that is going to be absolutely crucial.
And thirdly, I think that she’s best placed to beat the labour Lib Dems and the SNP at the next election.
Javid’s endorsement of Truss came last night after a difficult day for Sunak, after a poll from the Conservatives put the foreign secretary 32 points ahead with party members, a day after YouGov showed similar results.
Javid, who worked with Sunak in the Treasury and resigned on the same day, triggering the downfall of Boris Johnson, said Truss was best placed to “reunite the party” and said a new approach to the economy was needed – a direct attack on Sunak.
In an article for the Times, Javid wrote:
I fought for strong fiscal rules in our last manifesto. But the circumstances we are in require a new approach. Over the long term, we are more likely to be fiscally sustainable by improving trend growth.
Only by getting growth back to pre-financial crisis levels can we hope to support the high-quality public services people rightly expect.
Sunak and Javid were once considered close allies though came into conflict once Javid returned to the cabinet and clashed over health spending.
Javid’s article directly challenged Sunak’s claim that tax cuts would be inflationary.
He wrote:
Some claim that tax cuts can only come once we have growth. I believe the exact opposite – tax cuts are a prerequisite for growth.
Speaking on Times Radio this morning, Javid rejected criticism of Truss’s policies – warning it would be “riskier” not to cut taxes. There was “no risk-free option” and any leader her to come to terms with this, he said.
He said:
Fixing the economy is absolutely central, not just to deal with the cost-of-living challenges but to pay for all the public services, in the long-term, that we all rely on.
I think the only way we can do that is to improve our long-term growth rate. We need to get it back to where we were pre-financial crisis, we’re a long way off.
To do that, it can’t be business as usual and it does mean, when it comes to our fiscal position – balancing the books and things – we’ve got to take a long-term view.
Here’s the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Office for National Statistics publishes earnings gaps for free school meals recipients in England.
12pm: Bank of England interest rate decision.
8pm: Sky Tory leadership debate with Sunak and Liz Truss.
I’ll be covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or think I’ve missed anything. My email is leonie.chao-fong@theguardian.com or you can reach me on Twitter.
Key events
Filters BETA
Rishi Sunak has not responded to an appeal from MPs to combat Islamophobia amid a row over his proposals on extremism, the Independent reports.
Sunak and his rival, Liz Truss, were sent letters by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims calling for action after a series of delays and broken promises under Boris Johnson’s government.
The letter, which was sent out last week and was seen by the paper, called on the leadership contenders to commit to completing and publishing the investigation into allegations that Tory MP, Nusrat Ghani, had been sacked as a minister because of her “Muslimness”.
APPG vice-chair Afzal Khan wrote:
When a Muslim woman raises a direct experience of Islamophobic discrimination at the heart of government and her party, those allegations should be treated with the seriousness it deserves.
He added:
It is a depressing reality that Islamophobia has permeated into mainstream politics.
Khan said he hoped whoever became leader will take “tangible steps in rooting out this insidious hatred which threatens our British values”.
He also warned that a separative review published by the Conservative party was a “damning indictment of the prevalence of Islamophobia” and questioned what steps Truss or Sunak would taken “to reassure British Muslims of your commitment to tackling hatred and racism”.
Neither Truss nor Sunak has reportedly replied to the letters, and Sunak’s representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment by the Independent.
A representative for Truss’s campaign said:
As prime minister, Liz Truss will take a zero tolerance approach to Islamophobia.
My colleague, Aubrey Allegretti, has the full story on Sajid Javid denying that Liz Truss’s tax cuts plan will lead to increased borrowing:
Swingeing tax cuts pledged by Liz Truss will not lead to dramatically increased government borrowing or fuel inflation, her latest high-profile supporter, Sajid Javid, has claimed, in response to accusations the Conservative leadership frontrunner’s “dangerous” plans would exacerbate the cost of living crisis.
Taking aim at Rishi Sunak, his former Treasury protege, Javid hit out at the “business-as-usual” approach from the former chancellor and added: “We can’t rely on increasing taxes again and again.”
Nearly a month to the day since the pair’s sensational resignation led to the downfall of Boris Johnson, Javid declined to endorse Sunak and instead backed Truss to become prime minister.
He admitted that her immediate tax cut pledges were “risky”, but told Times Radio:
Not cutting taxes now is also risky and I think it’s the riskier option.
There’s no risk-free option here and any leader has to grip this and come up with the right policy and I think that’s what Liz is offering.
Read Aubrey’s Allegretti’s full write-up:
Mel Stride, the chair of the Commons Treasury committee and supporter of Rishi Sunak, has warned that Liz Truss’s plans for the economy and public finances are “dangerous”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
What we must do now is avoid stoking the inflation and making the problem even worse. One of the ways you can make the problem very significantly worse is by coming forward with large-scale, tens of billions of pounds’ worth, of unfunded tax cuts.
He added:
The big decision, fiscally, here is around tax. You have to do it in a measured way and at the right time but not start coming forward with tens of billions of unfunded tax cuts right now. I think that would be really quite dangerous.
Aubrey Allegretti
Liz Truss has said an £8.8bn black hole in her savings budget caused by her abandoning a policy to cut public sector wages was not part of her “central costings” for funding a range of spending pledges, as she suggested the policy had been a “mistake”.
She also defended her stance on Brexit as a former remain supporter, claiming that the disruption she was concerned about prior to the referendum did not happen, despite the long queues recently seen at Channel crossings at the start of the school holidays.
Quizzed for the first time in front of Conservative members on a controversial policy that she was forced to U-turn on earlier this week, the frontrunner in the Tory leadership race said she never intended to slash the pay of teachers and nurses.
She made the comments despite her campaign having announced on Monday night a policy designed to reduce expenditure on civil service staff outside London.
“It was misinterpreted … by the media,” Truss told a crowd of Tory members in Cardiff, for the third hustings of the campaign.
It was never intended to apply to nurses, doctors and teachers. So I wanted to clear the matter up straight away. And I have been very clear. We’re now not going ahead with that policy.
It wasn’t a central part of my policy platform. And I’ve been clear that it is not happening.
Senior Tory and Rishi Sunak supporter, Mel Stride, said the polls giving Liz Truss a comfortable lead were “out of touch with the reality” of the Conservative leadership contest.
Stride, who heads the Treasury Select Committee, said Sunak’s economic plans were similar to those adopted by Margaret Thatcher in the early years of her premiership to combat high inflation.
He told LBC Radio:
The last thing Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson would have done was what Liz is suggesting, ie. coming forward with all these unfunded tax cuts to stoke up inflation.
They got control of inflation and then Lawson went on to be one of the greatest tax cutting chancellors in our history. And that’s what Rishi can provide.
I think he’s just being honest. It’s very easy to stand up and promise tax cuts left, right and centre. He’s being honest about how we can get through but he does have a plan and I’m absolutely confident that he can deliver and, critically, win the next general election.
Some more lines from Sajid Javid, who last night threw his support behind Liz Truss to become the next Conservative leader. Speaking to Times Radio this morning, the former chancellor insisted Truss’s plans would not necessarily fuel inflation or ramp up borrowing.
Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts had around £31bn of “fiscal headroom” by 2024/25 “so that’s the first thing you can use to make tax cuts now”, he claimed.
Not going ahead with the planned increase in corporation tax from 19% to 25% in April would not have an impact on the inflation figures, he added.
Javid said:
It is not inflationary to not go ahead with a tax increase.
I don’t buy this argument that the things Liz is proposing, somehow they are all going to lead to higher inflation.
In the long-term they are going to help to fix the economy and that is the most important thing.
Sajid Javid says Liz Truss ‘best placed to unite the party’ in blow to Rishi Sunak
Good morning. Sajid Javid has endorsed Liz Truss as the next Conservative Party leader in a damaging blow to Rishi Sunak’s campaign, claiming that Truss is “best placed to unite the party” at a time when the Tories have “been in not a very good place”.
Javid told LBC this morning:
We need to fix things and to get a new leader in place as quickly as possible. But most importantly, that leader needs to be the right person to deal with the challenges that we have.
He said he had “huge respect” for both Truss and Sunak, who he described as both “incredibly capable and talented”. He added:
Like all Conservative party members, I have to make a choice. My choice is Truss. The reason I’ve made that decision is for three reasons: I think she’s best placed to unite the party and she’s already showing that with the broad support that she’s getting from MPs.
I think she’s got a better plan for fixing the economy. I think that is going to be absolutely crucial.
And thirdly, I think that she’s best placed to beat the labour Lib Dems and the SNP at the next election.
Javid’s endorsement of Truss came last night after a difficult day for Sunak, after a poll from the Conservatives put the foreign secretary 32 points ahead with party members, a day after YouGov showed similar results.
Javid, who worked with Sunak in the Treasury and resigned on the same day, triggering the downfall of Boris Johnson, said Truss was best placed to “reunite the party” and said a new approach to the economy was needed – a direct attack on Sunak.
In an article for the Times, Javid wrote:
I fought for strong fiscal rules in our last manifesto. But the circumstances we are in require a new approach. Over the long term, we are more likely to be fiscally sustainable by improving trend growth.
Only by getting growth back to pre-financial crisis levels can we hope to support the high-quality public services people rightly expect.
Sunak and Javid were once considered close allies though came into conflict once Javid returned to the cabinet and clashed over health spending.
Javid’s article directly challenged Sunak’s claim that tax cuts would be inflationary.
He wrote:
Some claim that tax cuts can only come once we have growth. I believe the exact opposite – tax cuts are a prerequisite for growth.
Speaking on Times Radio this morning, Javid rejected criticism of Truss’s policies – warning it would be “riskier” not to cut taxes. There was “no risk-free option” and any leader her to come to terms with this, he said.
He said:
Fixing the economy is absolutely central, not just to deal with the cost-of-living challenges but to pay for all the public services, in the long-term, that we all rely on.
I think the only way we can do that is to improve our long-term growth rate. We need to get it back to where we were pre-financial crisis, we’re a long way off.
To do that, it can’t be business as usual and it does mean, when it comes to our fiscal position – balancing the books and things – we’ve got to take a long-term view.
Here’s the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Office for National Statistics publishes earnings gaps for free school meals recipients in England.
12pm: Bank of England interest rate decision.
8pm: Sky Tory leadership debate with Sunak and Liz Truss.
I’ll be covering for Andrew Sparrow today. Do drop me a line if you have any questions or think I’ve missed anything. My email is leonie.chao-fong@theguardian.com or you can reach me on Twitter.
