I’m a campaigner and a doer – and I will deliver for Great Britain

When it was first reported that I was considering a leadership bid, someone tweeted “God help us all!” Gratifyingly, it was the RMT. If Britain’s most militant trade union is worried about my candidacy, I must be doing something right.

The problem we are trying to solve in the rail dispute has parallels with the country at large. The pandemic is the worst domestic crisis faced by the United Kingdom since the war. We as a government handled it well, but the economy and our public services have been weakened and need nursing back to full health.

We saved our railways, almost devoid of passengers during lockdown, through massive subsidy – £16billion – and now to justify that huge investment, the railways must modernise. The RMT is fighting this but we cannot lose this battle. So, we are introducing legislation to reduce selfish strike action. And we are taking the battle to Labour, flailing the Opposition for its hypocrisy.

Under my leadership, we are facing down the strikes, making hard choices on modernisation and introducing legislation to restrict strikes harmful to vital public services. People have a right to get to work and under my premiership they will have it, with a requirement for minimum service levels during industrial action.

The modernisation we are forcing through on the railways must spread to the rest of our economy – and the rest of our country. I am an optimist – pint half full – and I believe the UK can, with proper stewardship, become the biggest economy in Europe, overtaking Germany, by 2050. To do this, we must capitalise fully on our new Brexit freedoms to realise our full national potential. We can’t waste whole areas of the country, consigning them to second-class status.

Levelling up cannot be another discredited exercise in regional subsidy. It must involve the root-andbranch regeneration of our left-behind areas so that they approach the South East in terms of wealth. The Government can help, as with first-class transport infrastructure, but business is key. We must use the levers of power to foster sunrise industries such as hydrogen and car battery production into the old industrial heartlands. The high-quality jobs will follow.

Vision is nothing without organisation. Detail is everything.

I’m a details man. As Secretary of State in a major department, I insist on seeing everything relevant to correct decision-making. My case for the leadership is simple. I can plan. I can communicate. I can campaign. I can deliver. And I can win an election for our party in tough times. Witness 2015 when, as party chairman, I recruited 100,000 volunteers who helped us win a majority for the first time in 23 years. I took my own seat from Labour – I know about pounding the pavement.

As leader, I promise this: when the next election comes, I will fight and fight and fight again to bring the Conservative Party, the greatest political force in the democratic world, to victory. Even after 12 years, we need to be in power because no other party in this country has the solutions. If we keep coming up with them – testing, experimenting, being bold – we can earn that next victory.

We need fresh direction to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. This must mean the measured but relentless advance towards lower taxes, starting first with those on lower incomes facing crippling bills for energy and food. Inflation must be beaten and that means tax cuts must be phased in, combined with tight restraints on public spending, which, post-Covid, is still way too high.

In the longer term, we must make growth and productivity our obsession.

People mock “Singapore on Thames”. Well, I am very happy to learn from Singapore and other successful economies. We must make a low-tax, low-regulation economy our firm destination, not a hackneyed aspiration. Our corporation tax rate must be the most attractive of all major democratic economies.

Our focus on cutting public spending as a proportion of GDP must be a central plank of our strategy. But there is one area of spending that I will not compromise on – and will increase.

I am the descendant of Eastern European Jews who fled the pogroms of the 19th century. The end of history did not come with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Tyranny, vicious, aggressive, invasive tyranny, is still with us.

Putin’s ravaging of Ukraine has shocked and appalled us all. For me, strong defence is personal. My ancestors paid the price of persecution.

Our Armed Forces are superb – professional, courageous, simply the best. But personnel are too few, and cutting-edge equipment too scarce. We have too few fighter squadrons, warships and land systems to sustain a long period of high-intensity warfare. And we must prepare for this – exactly to deter aggressors and prevent it happening. We must therefore commit to raise UK defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP for the foreseeable future.

Powerful Armed Forces underline Britain’s indispensability to our European friends. We are Europe’s good cop – the country Putin fears most in his neighbourhood. We should be proud of that. It’s what we as a nation do – we step forward to confront the bully, the gangster. Our temperament admits nothing less.

In 2019, Boris Johnson created a new coalition of support from people not only in prosperous suburbs and the countryside but areas outside the traditional Tory heartlands. People with tough lives who put their faith in us. If we betray them, we will not deserve to win the next election.

I have no intention of betraying that trust. I’m a campaigner and a doer. And I will deliver.

Vision is nothing without organisation – as a details man, I will fix the problems that are holding our country back