‘I won’t work for Truss, we don’t agree on the big things’, Sunak says

Rishi Sunak indicates he will not serve in a Liz Truss cabinet if she defeats him to succeed Boris Johnson.

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak warm up for their televised leadership debate filmed at Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent, last month.

Rishi Sunak has indicated he will not serve in Liz Truss’s cabinet if she defeats him to succeed Boris Johnson.

The former chancellor of the exchequer trails the foreign secretary in polls of party members two weeks before the new prime minister takes office.

Truss has said she would offer Sunak a cabinet job, possibly as health secretary, if she were to win, but Sunak appeared to scoff at the prospect on Monday, saying he did not want to serve in a cabinet where he and the prime minister disagreed on “the big things”.

He told BBC Radio 2: “I am not focused on all of that, and I doubt Liz is. I am not thinking about jobs for me or anyone else. One thing I have reflected on as well, a bit, is being in a government, in cabinet, over the last couple of years, you really need to agree with the big things, because it is tough - as I found - when you don’t. And I wouldn’t want to end up in a situation like that again.”

Sunak resigned as chancellor last month, telling Johnson that “our approaches are fundamentally too different"and that it was “particularly important that the prime minister and chancellor remain united in hard times such as those we are experiencing today”.

He and Truss have displayed fundamentally different approaches during the leadership campaign towards how to respond to the cost of living crisis. Truss is calling for immediate tax cuts, which Sunak says would fuel inflation.

After the previous Conservative leadership election, in 2019, Johnson offered Jeremy Hunt, the runner-up, the role of defence secretary. Hunt, who had been foreign secretary, declined.

One Conservative MP said Sunak would be failing to put his “country first” if he did not take a cabinet job. Chris Skidmore, a former universities minister, said: “This is a real shame. We all should unite as Conservative MPs and one parliamentary party to serve whoever becomes prime minister.”

Rishi Sunak. Picture: AFP

This month Skidmore was the first MP publicly to defect from Sunak to Truss, saying he was “increasingly concerned” about Sunak’s “consistently changing position” on policy.

Lord Barwell, who was Theresa May’s chief of staff, warned that the divisive of nature the campaign could diminish the new cabinet. “Whoever wins this leadership election, it is vital they learn from Boris Johnson’s mistake and don’t exclude some of the best talent from their cabinet,” he said. “Our country faces profound challenges right now - it needs and deserves the Conservative Party to field its A-team.

“It’s one of the reasons I worry about the bitterness that has been a depressing feature of this campaign. There is a real danger that even if the new PM does the right thing and offers people from their opponent’s camp senior roles, they may refuse to serve.”

Sunak also said: “Liz’s plans are promising the earth to everybody. I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it. I don’t think life is that simple, and I think her plan risks making everything worse.” He played down polling figures that suggest he is losing the contest. “If I actually spent all my time looking at the polls or reading newspapers, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning to do all these things,” he said.

“There are a group of people among our members, and that is understandable, who are upset I resigned from government.” But he insisted he was receiving a “warm reception” from members he met.
The Times