Sunak suggests Truss would lose general election as poll puts her well ahead in Tory leadership race

Rishi Sunak has suggested that his Conservative leadership rival Liz Truss would lose the next general election to Labour, as a new poll of party members put her ahead by 24 points. The former chancellor of the exchequer said polling evidence showed that he was best placed to prevail over Keir Starmer and that Ms Truss would lead her party to defeat.

“That’s what the evidence we have today shows,” he said.

On the first full day of campaigning for the votes of about 160,000 party members, a YouGov poll put Ms Truss on 62 per cent with Mr Sunak on 38 per cent. In the poll 42 per cent said Mr Sunak would be a poor leader, compared with 31 per cent who say the same of Ms Truss and party members view her as more trustworthy than him.

In her first broadcast interview since she declared her candidacy two weeks ago, Ms Truss defended her proposal to borrow money to fund tax cuts, dismissing fears it would fuel inflation.

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“What is the gamble is what we’re doing at the moment because, currently, the United Kingdom is projected to head for a recession. So we need to do something different in order to get growth going, in order to put money in people’s pockets,” she told the BBC.

Mr Sunak has ruled out any tax cuts until inflation is under control and he warned on Thursday that Ms Truss’s plans would force the Bank of England to drive interest rates much higher.

“My strong point of view is if the government goes on a huge borrowing spree that is only going to make the situation worse. If we don’t get a grip of inflation now it will make families poorer in the long run, I want to avoid that at all costs,” he told LBC.

“I’m worried about the inflation that we’ve got at the moment becoming embedded and lasting far longer. That’s going to be so damaging for everyone listening because it’s going to erode all the savings that they’ve worked really hard to build up. It’s going to push up their mortgage rates and interest rates will have to go up very high to deal with them.”

Among Ms Truss’s tax plans is a proposal to treat households as a single tax entity and allow couples with young children or other caring responsibilities to transfer all their personal tax allowances to the non-working partner. She said the move would ensure that people were not penalised for taking time out to care for children or older relations but Labour’s Stella Creasy accused the foreign secretary of trying to take women back to the 1950s.

“Families across this country are crying out for affordable childcare so that they don’t have to choose between their career and their kids — instead of helping them and investing in provision, Liz Truss seems to think taxes should be used to make women stay home instead. It shows you this Tory party wants to take Britain back to the 1950s, not help everyone thrive in the 2020s,” she said.