Rishi Sunak will attempt to persuade Conservative party members that he stands in the tradition of their most successful recent leader with a speech on Saturday in Margaret Thatcher’s home town of Grantham. The former chancellor of the exchequer, who is 24 points behind foreign secretary Liz Truss according to a YouGov poll of party members, has claimed that despite his personal wealth, his background was similar to that of Mrs Thatcher.
“I’m lucky now but my story before, that’s where I came from. I grew up in Southampton and worked in my mum’s chemist. I delivered her prescriptions to her patients,” he said in an interview with the Sun.
“I worked in the local Indian restaurant when I was younger. So I grew up like that. And then, because of a lot of people’s love and kindness and sacrifice and hard work, you know, I’ve been really fortunate in my life. That’s why I want to be prime minister.”
The battle to succeed Boris Johnson
The Conservative leadership contest has been underway for two weeks and the eight candidates have been whittled down to two. Now things get serious. London editor Denis Staunton explains the strengths, weaknesses and campaign strategies of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
Boris Johnson’s allies blame Mr Sunak for the wave of ministerial resignations that toppled the prime minister but he said he took no pleasure in those events and he was sad about them.
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“I’ve still got a lot of respect and pride in the things that we achieved under his leadership,” he said.
Mr Sunak and Ms Truss have set out starkly different approaches to economic policy, with the former chancellor ruling out tax cuts until inflation is brought under control. Ms Truss has promised to borrow tens of billions of pounds to reverse tax increases Mr Sunak introduced and to fund further tax cuts.
Her economic adviser, Patrick Minford, acknowledged on Friday that her plan would drive the Bank of England to increase interest rates, suggesting they could rise to 7 per cent from their current 1.25 per cent.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” he told The Times.
“A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
Prof Minford said tax cuts would reduce the risk that higher interest rates would drive Britain into a recession but he acknowledged they would mean more expensive mortgages.
“If you’ve got incredibly low interest rates you kill off savings and create febrile markets with a lot of zombie companies surviving because it costs them nothing to borrow. It’s right that a healthy economy should have a decent interest rate. That’s certainly one thing I want to see,” he said.
Mr Sunak, who won the votes of more MPs than Ms Truss, has been seeking public endorsements from MPs who backed third-placed candidate Penny Mordaunt and others so that he can tell party members he has the backing of more than half the Conservative parliamentary party. Former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was eliminated in the first round of voting by MPs, endorsed Mr Sunak on Friday.
“We face a post-pandemic global economic crisis of inflation. The only way to unlock non-inflationary growth and prosperity is through innovation,” he said.
“We need a prime minister who gets science, technology, enterprise, innovation. For me, it’s Rishi Sunak.”
