‘I am the only major candidate who has not served in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet’
Jeremy Hunt tells why it will be different this time as he sets out his case for the top job
When the end finally came it was a relief to Jeremy Hunt. The former foreign secretary watched from his parliamentary office as the No.10 door swung open shortly after noon on Thursday and Boris Johnson called time on his premiership.
Less than three years earlier Mr Hunt had been the last Tory standing between Mr Johnson and Downing Street, having made the final two as the strongest ‘‘Stop Boris’’ candidate.
After defeat, he turned down the offer of defence secretary, rejecting his rival’s Cabinet for the backbenches, from where he followed this week’s spectacular political implosion.
Chatting in the basement kitchen of his central London townhouse, Mr Hunt, 55, mulls over a seismic seven days in British politics.
“I started the week desperately worried for the country and for the Conservative Party because we were rapidly losing the trust of large swathes of the electorate including many people who voted for us,” he says.
“The country was facing paralysis, the Government wasn’t able to deliver what it promised. So I think I feel a sense of relief that that at least has been resolved.”
But the reason Mr Hunt is talking to this newspaper is not to look back. Instead, it is to announce the biggest decision of his recent career – that he will, once again, run to become the next Conservative Party leader and thus the next Prime Minister.
“It’s very straightforward why I want to do it,” he begins, laying out the core themes of his pitch. “It is because we have to restore trust, grow the economy, and win the next election. Those are the three things that have to happen and I believe I can do that.”
Over almost an hour of discussion there are plenty of policy announcements.
Most notably, a one-two punch of business tax cuts: slashing corporation tax to 15 per cent and removing business rates for five years for the most in-need communities.
There are also robust defences of the criticisms sure to be thrown his way – his decision to vote Remain in the 2016 EU referendum; his lack of Treasury experience; whether he really can win a leadership race which he lost last time.
But we start with what Mr Hunt sees as a key point of difference from others – that choice to remain outside of the tent. “We have to be honest that over the last year we lost the trust of many swathes of people who voted Conservative in 2019,” he says.
“I am the only major candidate who has not served in Boris Johnson’s government. I called out what was going wrong long before any of the other major contenders and I have not been defending the indefensible.
“So by choosing me, the Conservative Party is sending a signal to those voters that we have listened to your concerns and we have changed. That is the most important thing we need to do now. It is to restore trust.”
The message matches the political reality. Polls of the public and Tory members suggest the drip-drip of headlines about Tory sleaze and Downing Street mistruths has eroded trust– hence why many leadership candidates stress their “honesty”.
Unlike recent Cabinet ministers who must justify why they stayed by Mr Johnson for so long, Mr Hunt has a clean slate. It is a potential advantage he appears set to press.
He is, though, careful not to criticise Mr Johnson directly. “This is not the moment to speak of someone who has just been brutally defenestrated,” he says, before noting achievements such as unblocking the Brexit logjam in 2019 and steering the country through Covid-19.
It is a similar approach adopted throughout the interview. He refuses to call out rival Tories explicitly, instead pivoting to the policy debates underlying the race.
Mr Hunt, after all, is no newbie to politics. A former Charterhouse head boy and Oxford University PPE-er, he was first elected in 2005 to his seat of South West Surrey.
The constituency, as Mr Hunt is quick to note, is firmly “Blue Wall” – that is, part of the traditional Tory countryside support base which are bleeding votes under Mr Johnson.
He has held three cabinet posts – culture secretary, health secretary, where he served longer than any other in the role, and foreign secretary under two prime ministers, David Cameron then Theresa May. That near decade of cabinet experience will be noted in his bid.
‘We need to start-up Britain now. That means sending a signal that we’re going to be the most pro-business economy in the western world’
His second central campaign plank will be his economic approach – what is set to be the biggest issue in the leadership race, with inflation soaring and recession looming.
“What we need to do is to turn ourselves from a high-tax, low-growth economy, into a low-tax, high-growth economy,” he says.
To achieve that, he is proposing two business tax cuts. The first is on corporation tax.
He will not just reverse the rise from 19 per cent to 25 per cent due to kick in this April, but cut the rate to 15 per cent.
That is the lowest point allowed under a recent deal struck by the world’s leading economies. It is also the joint lowest rate in the G20 group of nations, matching Canada.
The move would be adopted in Mr Hunt’s first Budget, meaning this autumn, if he wins the race, and take effect next spring. The hope is it will boost economic growth.
Mr Hunt explains: “I know from when I set up my own business as an entrepreneur, it was because Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson created a pro-business climate.
“And that was what persuaded me to take the risks, to start from nothing with no capital, no office, no people and build up something that ended up being a success.
“We need to start-up Britain now. That means sending a signal, that in the first chapter in our post-Brexit future we’re going to be the most pro-business economy in the Western world.”
The second tax cut is to business rates – the charge levied on commercial properties like shops, offices, pubs, warehouses, just for operating. Business rates will be scrapped for five years for the most economically struggling parts of the country.
Many of those areas are in the ‘Red Wall’, those traditionally Laboursupporting constituencies in the Midlands and North which Mr Johnson flipped in the 2019 election.
A quarter of locations in England and Wales would get the tax break, with a measurement called the “indices of deprivation” used to decide which areas benefit. Scottish and Northern Irish devolved administrations will get money to match the policy.
“Our levelling-up agenda has been far too New Labour,” Mr Hunt says, suggesting he would keep Mr Johnson’s flagship domestic policy slogan but approach it differently.
“It’s been about infrastructure – a road here, a hospital there. These things matter. But in the end, what matters is wealth creation which means that people don’t feel that they need to leave a Bolton or a Bolsover because they can get better jobs in Manchester or London. They can actually stay there. That means helping them have opportunities at home that makes talented people want to stay.”
All of this costs money – tens of billions of pounds over the coming years. Fully costed details will drop in the coming days, his team says.
There is one other key change. Instead of getting UK debt falling over three years – current policy – Mr Hunt’s plan will do so over five years, creating more fiscal headroom to cover the tax cuts.
The decision, in essence, is that it is justified to borrow more now to deliver the business tax cuts that can kick start growth.
His proposals differ from Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor whose economic plan he is deviating from. But notably he does not go as far on tax cuts as other rivals most likely will.
Mr Hunt says personal tax cuts must wait. “I would love to see income tax cut, but it has to be done in a way that is sustainable”, he argues.
“It can’t be an electoral bribe and it depends on growth. What you’d need is an income tax cut that is for life, not for Christmas. That means starting by saying we’re going to get the economy growing, then you get yourself in a position.”
The National Insurance increase would be kept by Mr Hunt – “the NHS needs the money” – and there is no commitment to reduce stamp duty.
On spending, it is unclear whether Mr Hunt would radically depart from the current trajectory, which is heading to a 50-year high. He defends the Cameron austerity years –when he was in the cabinet – but does not call for a return to those days.
Mr Hunt has no Treasury experience – something critics may use to undercut him – but points to his time setting up and running a successful business. The education courses directory business he set up, called Hotcourses, eventually grew to employ 200 people and was sold for a multi-million pound figure.
Away from the economy, there is time for a speedy race through his other policy positions.
His decision not to back Brexit in the 2016 referendum will be a political challenge for his bid, given the Tory membership’s overwhelming support. Mr Hunt argues today is different to 2019, when he got just 34 per cent of the member vote to Mr Johnson’s 66 per cent.
“I think the debate in 2019 was at a point where Brexit hadn’t been completed so people understandably said, well, we need to back someone who has been supportive of Brexit from the outset. But now it’s a very different debate,” he says, adding “Brexit freedoms” must be embraced to make the UK Europe’s “powerhouse” economy.
So if he could turn the clock back to 2016, would he vote to leave the European Union? “I would be very tempted to,” he says, which is not a yes.
But Mr Hunt does, interestingly, promise to keep pushing Mr Johnson’s Northern Ireland Protocol bill through Parliament if he wins, despite Brussels insisting the move to rip up the agreement on the province’s trade rules breaks international law.
Mr Hunt says he prefers a negotiated solution to the stand-off but agrees the UK’s internal market cannot be disrupted as it is now with Irish Sea customs checks.
That is not the only controversial Johnson policy he would keep. Some illegal migrants would be deported to Rwanda under a Hunt premiership. “I hope we could find some other countries as well as Rwanda,” Mr Hunt says, making clear he wants to expand the scheme. “Yes, I support it.”
Other huge policy areas are given brief time. Health policy – Mr Hunt’s strong suit against the other candidates given his half a decade leading the Health Department – is close to his heart. He would bring back family doctors and launch a mechanism to get people saving for their social care from an early age.
Mr Hunt also admits he did not get everything right in the brief, in a nod to the anger some doctors and nurses still feel towards him, naming not making independent the decisionmaking over training more doctors and nurses as a mistake.
On foreign policy, he promises his “rock solid” support to Ukraine and repeats his pledge to spend 4 per cent of GDP on defence, aid and foreign policy. At least 3 per cent will go on defence.
In the coming days, MP supporters will be announced. There will be no three-word slogan, like Mr Sunak’s ‘Ready for Rishi’.
Not even ‘Jez We Can’, The Sunday Telegraph suggests, in an ode to Barack Obama? “I’ll have to tear up all our literature now you’ve given me that one. A brilliant one,” he chuckles. But it is a no.
Which leaves one question looming. Mr Hunt has clearly been planning his run for a while. His family – wife Lucia, 44, and children John, 12, Anna, 10, and Ellie, 7 – are supporting the drive and are well used to his life in the political frontline.
But after two failed leadership pushes – in 2016 he floated then canned a bid; in 2019 two thirds of party members went for the other guy – why does he think it will be third time lucky?
He replies, unexpectedly, with a Gordon Brown line. “Because, to quote someone who Conservatives don’t normally quote, this is no time for a novice.”