Truss tears into virtue-signalling Cabinet ‘vultures’
TORY leadership contender Liz Truss has l aunched an extraordinary attack on her Cabinet rivals, branding them ‘vultures’ trying to appease ‘Left-wing whingers’ with big spending pledges
Amid growing division within the Cabinet over Brexit ‘wrecking’, the Treasury Minister let rip at her ‘endless colleagues asking for spending on this that or the other’.
In a speech described as ‘the starting gun on the leadership election’, the South West Norfolk MP declared the Conservatives must slash taxes and be radical if they want any hope of winning the next Election.
And she took aim at the policies of her rivals for the Tory crown, including Chancellor Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark.
Speaking at a Westminster dinner on Wednesday, Ms Truss pleaded for an injection of ‘va va voom into the DNA of the Conservative Parliamentary Party because I am afraid the ratio of my colleagues talking about increasing spending to cutting taxes is not good’. And the Treasury Chief Secretary accused Tory MPs of being ‘ashamed’ to call for fiscal responsibility because they were afraid of losing the next Election to Jeremy Corbyn.
In the most open pitch for the leadership by a serving Cabinet Minister yet, Ms Truss said: ‘So what do we need to stand for? First of all we have to be the party of lower taxes.
‘ And the reality is we have a 50-year high in terms of tax burden. Now I do not think we can go into the next Election in that position. We need to lower our taxes.’
Her speech came amid a week of feverish plotting by Ministers jostling to replace Theresa May as soon as this summer. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was spotted conspiring with Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns and allies over a late-night fastfood meal on Tuesday, in what one MP branded ‘the Byron Burger betrayal’.
Sources say that former Chief Whip Mr Williamson – who hel ped Mrs May become Prime Minister – has ‘concluded she is toast’ and has begun ‘crunching the num- bers for who is next’. But so far only Ms Truss has been so public with her ambitions, with one Minister accusing her of ‘ firing the starting gun on the race’ with Wednesday’ s speech. Addressing over 120 Ministers, MPs and other Westminster figures celebrating the 15th anniversary of the grassroots TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign, she went on: ‘In too many cases we have been a bit too ashamed of being Conservatives, ashamed of being free marketeers and ashamed of being in favour of low taxes.’
Setting out her vision for the country, she added: ‘People like money, they like success, they want to buy a new car, a new house, they want to travel abroad, they want to be successful. The Conservatives will only win when we are the party of aspiration opportunity and that success.’
She said that in ‘a Britain dominated by Left-wing whingeing and virtue-signallers’, the Tories had been too afraid to stand up for what they believe in.
As well as promoting her vision for how to win the next Election, Ms Truss also used her speech to take aim at fellow Cabinet Ministers who have asked for more money, such as former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Mr Williamson.
She said: ‘Too many of us in the Conservative Party think there is some magic money tree we can somehow find and pay for all that spending. Not enough of us have been talking about taxpayers, we spend far too much time talking about public money as if it something just delivered from heaven and doesn’t actually come from people’s pockets.’
Pointing to the fact Mr Hammond told the Commons the economy was recovering faster than expected, Ms Trust said: ‘We have options now. We could increase investment, we could increase our public spending, we could reduce the deficit, or we could reduce taxes. What I think is interesting is, ever since those numbers came to light, the vultures have been circling, I’ve heard from endless colleagues asking for spending on this that or the other.
‘I call these colleagues of mine plastic hawks, because they are always there telling me they are a fiscal hawk, but come every spending discussion it’s like “my department needs more money, my area needs more money”.’
She went onto call for the Justice Secretary David Gauke’s department put under the control of the Home Office and Business Secretary’s Greg Clark’s department to be merged with the Department for Transport.
‘We’ve become ashamed of wanting low taxes’