Rishi Sunak, the UK’s former chancellor, has officially launched his campaign to become the next prime minister in a bid to outpace his rivals, with cabinet endorsements by deputy prime minister Dominic Raab and transport secretary Grant Shapps.
Sunak is the frontrunner in the battle to become Tory party leader, with more publicly declared support from MPs than any of the other remaining nine candidates. But he is seeking to head off opposition from the right of the party, notably from other contenders with more aggressive tax-cutting platforms.
Raab introduced Sunak on stage for the launch of a bid based on fiscal discipline and a pledge to cut taxes only when inflation is under control, describing the former chancellor as a “true Conservative”.
“We need a leader who can win,” Raab said. “The reality is, the polling shows only Rishi can beat Labour.”
Shapps announced he would end his leadership bid and support Sunak. He tweeted: “Amongst a field of brilliant candidates I’ve spoken to Rishi Sunak who I believe has the competence and experience to lead this country.”
After claims by Boris Johnson’s allies that his resignation as chancellor last week had been “treacherous” towards the prime minister, Sunak sought to broker a truce with Downing Street. He said Johnson had “a good heart”, adding he would refuse to take part in a rewriting of history that sought to “demonise” the prime minister.
The move was intended to win over support from Johnson loyalists, many of whom are already committed to other candidates.
Foreign secretary Liz Truss has received two endorsements from cabinet ministers, as loyalists to Johnson rally around her candidacy.
Culture secretary Nadine Dorries and Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg both announced they would back Truss’s candidacy and said she was a “bigger Brexiter” than both of them.
Sunak has faced strong criticism from his rivals for presiding over a series of tax rises. Many other candidates are proposing sweeping tax cuts in a bid to appeal to the right of the party.
The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility said on Tuesday that any proposed tax cuts should “add up”, warning that they were not what mattered most for long-term economic growth.
Speaking at the Institute for Government, Richard Hughes said that the question to ask candidates promising tax cuts was: “Are you going to revisit those increases in spending or look somewhere else?”
He also questioned the impact of tax cuts.
“Cutting taxes can provide some short term stimulus to demand,” he said, but added that they would take place against a backdrop of rising inflation, rising interest rates and uncertainty about the medium term fiscal outlook.
“In the long term, you know, there is no empirical relationship between the tax burden and GDP growth. There are countries which tax much more highly than we do and grow faster than we do,” he said.