Liz vows: I am only one who’ll hit the ground running as your new PM
‘I’ll make Britain an aspiration nation’
‘The person to get things done’
LIZ Truss will highlight her vast Cabinet experience as she promises Tory MPs she is the only candidate who will hit the ground running if she is made prime minister.
The Foreign Secretary, who has also held Cabinet posts in a number of other departments, will launch her campaign for No 10 by stressing her aim to unite the party.
‘I am ready to be Prime Minister on day one. I can lead, make tough decisions and rise to the moment,’ she is expected to say.
‘The British people are crying out for a united and modern Conservative government ready with the courage of its convictions to deliver on its promises.’
Miss Truss will set out her pitch by saying she wants to make Britain ‘an aspiration nation’.
She will suggest that she will borrow to cut taxes, including reversing April’s national insurance rate rise and lowering corporation tax.
‘I have a plan to make Britain a highgrowth economy through bold supplyside reform,’ she will say. Miss Truss, who finished as the leading candidate from the Tory Right in first round of leadership voting yesterday, will formally launch her leadership campaign this morning.
Despite getting the backing of Boris Johnson’s most loyal Cabinet ministers – including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries – she will declare that she is the ‘change’ candidate.
The minister, who attended a comprehensive school in Leeds, will also promise to try to give every child ‘the best opportunity to succeed’.
In an interview with The Spectator yesterday, Miss Truss said she would treat borrowings built up during the pandemic like a war debt to be written off over a long period, creating fiscal headroom to slash the tax burden.
She said: ‘Covid was a one-off crisis. The debt we accumulated as a result of that, the £400billion we spent, should be seen as a long-term debt – like a war debt – and needs to be longer-term.
‘I don’t agree with the Treasury orthodoxy of immediately seeking to pay that back and balance the books and economic growth.’ Miss Truss – who has held Cabinet posts as environment secretary, justice secretary, chief secretary the Treasury and trade secretary – will also declare that her mission is to ensure every child has ‘the best opportunity to succeed’.
She will talk about how she saw classmates at her Leeds school ‘fail’ due to ‘low expectations’.
‘They will never be let down again on my watch,’ she will say. ‘Everyone in our great country should be born with the same opportunities and be able to know that the town they are born in has opportunity.’
Miss Truss has won the backing of prominent Brexiteers Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Mark Francois. At a hustings organised by the 92 Group of Thatcherite MPs, she insisted she is ‘the person to get things done and turn the economy around’.
After last night’s vote, a spokesman for Miss Truss said she ‘has the experience to deliver the benefits of Brexit from day one, grow our economy and support working families’. Miss Truss’s allies yesterday denied she was a ‘continuity Boris’ candidate.
Alec Shelbrooke MP, a member of her campaign team, said: ‘ She has obviously got the most Cabinet experience of everybody. I think that Liz is really bringing together both wings of the party.’