Rishi Sunak has defended his decision to resign as chancellor of the exchequer after he was accused at the first hustings of the Conservative leadership campaign of stabbing Boris Johnson in the back. Mr Sunak said he was grateful to Mr Johnson for making him chancellor of the exchequer but that he was also proud of his own record in the job.
“But for me personally it got to a point where I couldn’t stay. I had significant difference of opinion with him on how to handle the economic challenges that were ahead of us. And with a situation like that there was absolutely no way I could stay. I was left with no choice but to resign and I’m sad that I had to but that was the right thing to do and that was me acting on my principles,” he said.
Ms Truss stressed her loyalty to the outgoing prime minister, telling the audience that she had backed him for the leadership in 2016 before he dropped out of the contest that Theresa May later won.
“I’ve always been a fan of Boris Johnson. I think he did a fantastic job as prime minister. I was proud to serve as a loyal member of his cabinet,” she said.
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The two candidates made their pitch to an audience of 1,500 party members at Elland Road in Leeds, before being interviewed separately by LBC’s Nick Ferrari and taking questions from the floor.
Mr Sunak was introduced by former Brexit secretary David Davis, who reminded the audience that the former chancellor of the exchequer campaigned to leave the European Union in 2016, unlike Ms Truss.
Three big jobs
Mr Sunak said the three most important challenges facing the next prime minister were restoring trust, rebuilding the economy and uniting the country behind a fifth consecutive term in office for the Conservatives.
“I haven’t taken the easy road. There are plenty of things I could have said to make my life easy but I wanted to be honest about the challenges our country faces and what is going to be required to fix them,” he said.
“What I won’t do is embark on a spree borrowing tens and tens of billions of pounds of unfunded promises and put them on the country’s credit card and pass them on to our children and our grandchildren to pick up the tab. That’s not right, that’s not responsible, and that’s certainly not Conservative.”
Unlike Mr Sunak, Ms Truss won a number of rounds of applause during her opening pitch, when she said that Northern Powerhouse rail must be built, Vladimir Putin must fail, farmers must be supported and “a woman is a woman”. Casting herself as an insurgent, she dismissed Mr Sunak’s reluctance to fund tax cuts by borrowing tens of billions of pounds as the establishment orthodoxy.
“What I think I got from Yorkshire is grit, determination and straight-talking and that, my friends, is what I think we need now in Downing Street. Because the fact is we face a huge global economic crisis. We have the worst war that has taken place on European shores taking place in Ukraine,” she said.
“Now is not the time for business as usual. Now is not the time for the status quo. We need to be bold and we need to do things differently.”
Ms Truss is ahead of Mr Sunak by more than 20 points, according to one poll of party members, who will start voting next week, with the result to be announced on September 5th.
