Dorries accuses the Rishi camp of ‘dirty tricks’ to fix key voting

RISHI Sunak was last night accused of handing fake votes to rival candidates as part of a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign.

Nadine Dorries claimed the former chancellor’s team were persuading Tory MPs to vote for candidates with little chance of winning the Conservative leadership.

The Culture Secretary said it was a ‘stitchup’ designed to help a candidate such as Jeremy Hunt get down to the final two, making it easier for Mr Sunak to win.

One source claimed that former minister Gavin Williamson, pictured, who is leading Mr Sunak’s parliamentary campaign, was organising the votes for other candidates.

Only 14 MPs have come out publicly to back former health secretary Mr Hunt.

But yesterday he reached the threshold of 20 MPs needed to go through to the first round of voting.

This sparked claims from rivals that Mr Hunt had only made the list because nonsupporters had voted for him. Mrs Dorries, who announced yesterday morning that she was backing Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, said: ‘This is dirty tricks/ a stitch up/dark arts. Take your pick.

‘Team Rishi want the candidate they know they can definitely beat in the final two and that is Jeremy Hunt.’ But last night a source on Mr Hunt’s campaign denied the claim.

‘This is categorically untrue and we hope all candidates and supporters will campaign on their own merits rather than attempting to smear opponents – just as Jeremy has done throughout his political career,’ they said. One source in a rival camp claimed Mr Williamson was organising the siphoning off of some votes to let Mr Hunt get over the threshold. A source in Mr Sunak’s team said the accusation is not true. ÷Tom Tugendhat vowed to

deploy defence chiefs to clear the NHS backlog as he launched his Conservative leadership campaign yesterday. In a speech littered with military metaphors, the former soldier said the British people wanted a government to ‘not only hold the line but to advance their aspirations’.

He pledged to tackle the burgeoning NHS backlog by introducing a ‘binding’ A&E and referrals target – and vowed to make NHS leaders accountable for it.

And Mr Tugendhat said that on his first day as Prime Minister he would bring together experts from the NHS, military, public and private sectors to bust through the backlog. ‘Too many of us are struggling to access the services we need, to see the doctors we want, struggling to feel safe and secure in our homes,’ he said at his campaign launch yesterday.

The senior Tory backbencher went on: ‘As a first and immediate step I would reintroduce a binding A&E and referrals target and hold NHS leaders accountable for it.’

‘Campaign on their own merits’