Liz Truss widens lead over Tory rival Rishi Sunak

The former chancellor warns the foreign secretary’s plans to tackle the cost of living crisis would represent a ‘moral failure’.

Liz Truss on the hustings in Belfast on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss retains an apparently un­assailable lead in the contest to be the next prime minister, with a poll showing her 32 points ahead of Rishi Sunak among Conservative party members.

As Mr Sunak’s campaign falters, the former chancellor has escalated his attack on Ms Truss. The former chancellor of the exchequer warned again on Wednesday that her plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis would represent a “moral failure” of the Tory government and said he would never implement it.

The warning came as a cabinet minister suggested that workers “could try harder” as he supported Ms Truss’s comments that they needed “more graft”.

The two candidates to succeed Boris Johnson clashed at a hustings in Belfast after a poll for the ConservativeHome website showed Ms Truss on 60 per cent and Mr Sunak on 28 per cent, with 9 per cent undecided and 3 per cent preferring neither.

The survey found that 60 per cent of members had already voted, narrowing Ms Sunak’s opportunity to regain ground.

Other surveys have produced similar results but Mr Sunak’s team insists that methods of polling party members are inaccurate and he has received enthusiastic receptions during the campaign.

It emerged this week that Ms Truss once claimed British workers needed “more graft” and contrasted their “mindset and attitude” unfavourably with the Chinese. In a leaked recording obtained by The Guardian, Ms Truss, who was chief secretary to the Treasury, blamed the national productivity problem on “skill and application” among workers.

Kit Malthouse, the Cabinet Office minister, said there had been “a productivity issue in this country for some time”. He said this was partly down to lack of investment in machinery and that “lots of people in the British economy work extremely hard”.

When asked if Ms Truss was right, Mr Malthouse, who is yet to publicly support either candidate, said: “Every single school report I ever had said ‘could try harder’. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with encouraging people to work as hard as they possibly can.”

Mr Sunak criticised Ms Truss’s proposals to tackle the cost of living, saying that “millions of people are at risk of a very tough time”.

The foreign secretary has resisted setting out details beyond saying she would prioritise tax cuts and offer some targeted help to the poorest people.

“We have to support vulnerable groups, those on low incomes and pensioners directly with fin­ancial support, because a tax cut does not work for those people,” Mr Sunak said. “If we don’t directly help those vulnerable groups … then it will be a moral failure of the Conservative government and I don’t think the British people will forgive us for that and it’s not something I would ever do as prime minister.”

Ms Truss insisted cutting taxes would make everyone better off. “We have the highest levels of tax for 70 years,” she said. “It’s my view that if you put taxes up too high, you actually get less revenue. And because businesses are less likely to invest, people are less likely to set up new companies, people are less likely to go into work if there aren’t clear benefits to doing so. And I think we’ve got to the stage in our economy where taxes are too high and they’re ­potentially choking off growth.”

The Times