‘He has done enough damage’
Tory leadership hopefuls came out swinging with promises to slash taxes – with Sajid Javid and Tom Tugendhat pledging to scrap the hated national insurance hike;
Penny Mordaunt’s campaign got off to a bumpy start after it emerged that convicted killer Oscar Pistorius featured in her promotional video;
Leadership candidate and Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi hit out at ‘smears’ over his tax affairs, saying he does not benefit from an offshore trust and has never held non-domicile status;
Former Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove backed Kemi Badenoch in the leadership race;
Candidate Suella Braverman said the scuppering of the Rwanda migrant flights proved the UK needs to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Allies of Miss Truss last night attacked Mr Sunak’s economic record.
Miss Truss is expected to say today she has the experience to lead the country – and now is not the time for an untested leader. In a sign of the potential explosiveness of a ‘Rishi vs Liz’ run- off, her allies savaged the ex-Chancellor’s economic record, saying he had ‘f***** up’ on taxes.
Referencing the sum set aside for the Covid test and trace programme, an ally said: ‘Where has this idea come from that tax cuts would be inflationary but putting £37 billion into giveaways isn’t?
‘It’s going back to the Gordon Brown approach of taxing
people so we can give it away to certain groups instead of trusting people to spend their own money.’
There were also claims of vicious briefing against Mr Sunak last night.
An extraordinary 400-word dossier being circulated on WhatsApp called Mr Sunak ‘a liar’ and a ‘schoolboy’. And a video was widely shared of a young Mr Sunak admitting he had ‘no working class friends’. On the involvement of Mr Cummings, one leadership campaign source said: ‘Candidates should come clean about whether they are receiving any advice at all from Cummings, because it is obvious he is trying to insert himself into the campaign.
‘I think he is poisoning the well of debate, and trying to turn this contest into something that it doesn’t need to be. This could be a completely clean and fair fight about Conservative values.
‘ Rishi Sunak’s campaign should come clean. Are they having any contact with Dom,
do they welcome any contact, are they receiving any advice?’
But a Sunak campaign spokesman hit back, saying: ‘Mr Cummings and Rishi have not spoken since he left No 10 almost two years ago.’
A source added that there was ‘absolutely no involvement whatsoever’ between Mr Sunak’s campaign and Mr Cummings, and that he would have ‘no role’ in a Sunak government.
Blue-on-blue attacks in the leadership race stepped up over the weekend, despite Mr Johnson last week urging his Cabinet to focus on voters rather than themselves.
Two rival campaign teams are said to have passed Labour a digital dossier containing lurid allegations about their opponents, the Sunday Times reported. The paper said the documents include claims about the hopeful leaders’ private lives and financial arrangements.
Mr Cummings, meanwhile, claimed on Friday that at least ‘ three current candidates would be worse than Boris’ and ‘ at least one is more insane than Truss, clearly unfit to be anywhere near nuclear codes’. He also said one candidate was romantically involved with an aide.
Former Tory party chairman David Davis said people should treat Mr Cummings’ claims with ‘a pinch of salt’ as he had ‘ proven himself untrustworthy in the past’.
Mr Cummings did not respond to requests for comment last night.
‘Poisoning the well of debate’