‘I’m not going to do what May tried to do’
Jeremy Hunt today accuses Boris Johnson of being a “bottler” as he fires the opening salvo in part two of the Tory leadership race. The Foreign Secretary accuses his rival of dodging public debates until after many Conservative Party members have cast their votes, claiming he is afraid of being exposed to scrutiny.
Last night Kay Burley, the Sky News presenter, said Mr Johnson had refused to take part in a televised debate due to be held on Tuesday, on which Mr Hunt has already agreed to appear.
Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson will face Conservative Party members in Birmingham today in the first of 16 regional hustings events before the membership picks a winner in a month’s time. Mr Hunt goaded the leadership front runner with a reference to Mr Johnson’s great hero Winston Churchill, saying: “This is supposed to be his finest hour... but if you’re going to hide away, that’s not democracy.”
The Foreign Secretary said: “He may be the right man, I may be the right man. But Conservative Party members can only make that choice if you have a proper debate.
“And you can’t have that debate if one of the candidates is bottling all opportunities to have a public head-to-head debate before ballot papers are sent out.”
He said Tory members will begin receiving voting slips on July 5, but Mr Johnson has only committed to a television debate on July 9, meaning potentially large numbers of members will already have posted their votes before they see the two candidates in action.
Mr Hunt went on: “The first thing Boris did after the result was announced was challenge me to a debate on ITV. I thought ‘fantastic, we’re going to have a really good debate’. Then I looked at the dates. And that ITV debate is not until after a lot of people have actually sent their votes back.”
Mr Hunt wrote to Mr Johnson last night challenging him to live televised debates “right at the start of this contest” and having a live debate on local media after each of the 16 regional hustings events, which are being held for party members, to “bring the public into this process”.
He said the purpose of the fourweek hustings process was “to test our plans, our policies, our character” and it would “do this country a deep disservice if we hide away until members have submitted their postal ballots”.
He challenged Mr Johnson to two televised debates in the next fortnight, starting with the Sky News event on Tuesday, and said he had already accepted offers from the BBC and Channel 4 as well as ITV.
“Scrutiny can be uncomfortable,” he said. “But if we can’t handle it with friends, we won’t deserve to lead against our opponents.”
Mr Hunt was in a distinctly bullish mood as he paused during a day of campaigning that took him from Worcester to Surrey via London.
“There’s a lot of excitement in team Hunt at the moment,” he said. “Yeah. It’s gonna be an uphill battle. But I like to prove people wrong. And this is totally doable.”
The Foreign Secretary is under no illusions about the scale of the task, but he believes history is on his side, and had a warning for the Johnson camp.
“You know, in every campaign that we have put to the members in the past, the front runner has not won,” he said. “We are in the biggest constitutional crisis of my lifetime, and I think, far more than the personalities of the individuals, people want to know who has the best solution who can get us out of the crisis of the Brexit process. I’m that person.”
In the drawing room of his official
London residence in Carlton Gardens – whose previous occupant was, of course, Mr Johnson – Mr Hunt sits opposite a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, who knew a thing or two about overcoming the odds during the Napoleonic Wars. His campaign team point out that Mr Hunt has received £82,000 in donations in the past two weeks, while Mr Johnson has managed only £25,000.
“We’ve had extraordinary momentum in the last couple of weeks, as people have seen me on the TV debates. I’m going to win this campaign on the basis of my arguments.”
While Boris Johnson has been accused of hiding in a “bunker” by his opponents, Mr Hunt has tried to get a head start by campaigning out in the country. He began yesterday in Worcester, where he took his usual 7am run along the banks of the Severn, before a “walkabout” in the city to test the temperature of the nation.
He intends to carry on criss-crossing the country meeting voters in the next month. And he is well prepared for the barbs that will come his way from Mr Johnson and his supporters.
Is he “continuity May”? Is he just “Theresa in trousers”?
“I’d be the first prime minister who has been an entrepreneur, the first prime minister to have run the NHS, the first prime minister who has won a
You can’t have a debate if one of the candidates is bottling all opportunities to have a public head-to-head’
marginal seat for half a century. That’s pretty different. And when it comes to Brexit, I’ve got a totally different approach. I’m not going to be doing what Theresa May tried to do, which is to try and force the backstop through Parliament.”
Mr Hunt knows Brexit is his great weakness, as much as it is Mr Johnson’s great strength. He voted Remain in the EU referendum, and has said he would be prepared to extend Article 50 beyond October 31 if necessary and only pursue a no-deal Brexit as a “very, very last resort”.
Asked if it was possible to pursue a no-deal Brexit against the will of Parliament, Mr Hunt said: “That depends whether Parliament gets its act together and legislates to stop you or decides to bring down the Government in a vote of no confidence. And both of those things are very real risks.
“And that is exactly the question that you should be putting to Boris as well. Because we have to recognise that in a parliamentary democracy, any prime minister has to obey the law, and ultimately is subject to the will of Parliament.”
He refuses to say for how long beyond October Brexit could be delayed under a Hunt premiership because “a wise prime minister makes decisions on the basis of the choices in front of them”. Nor will he give details of how he intends to persuade the EU to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement and remove the backstop – the mechanism designed to prevent a hard border in Ireland in the event of no trade deal being in place at the end of the transition period.
However, he says he would put together a negotiating team that would include Brexiteers from the European Research Group so that Brussels would have confidence that Parliament would back any deal reached, and he would visit Ireland in his first week in power “because the key to unlocking the Brexit crisis that we’re in is to see if we can find common ground with them”.
Does he agree with Mr Johnson’s promise of raising the higher rate tax threshold from £50,000 to £80,000?
“It wouldn’t be my priority to cut taxes for wealthier people,” he said.
“Conservatives want to cut taxes and find more money for vital public services. The only way you square that argument is to turbocharge the economy so that you can afford to do both. So my first tax cuts would be some very substantial business tax cuts, to boost our growth rate, in a not dissimilar way to the way that Trump has done in the United States.
“What Conservatives understand is that it’s not how you cut up the cake, as much as the size of the cake that matters. And so my first priority would be to fire up the British economy, really get businesses motoring. And then we can find money to reduce the burden of taxation.”
Aside from Brexit, Mr Hunt says his top three priorities would be boosting the economy, increasing defence spending – “because I want Britain to walk tall in the world” – and abolishing illiteracy.
“I want us to be the Conservative government that says every single young person will leave education with the rigorous qualification necessary to get a decently paid job because our national blind spot for too long has been the 50 per cent of school leavers who don’t go to university, and I will do something about it.”