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The race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is getting tighter and the big beasts are getting involved.
Sajid Javid, the former health secretary whose resignation last week helped bring Johnson down, and former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, who lost to Johnson in the 2019 leadership runoff, used interviews in the Telegraph late on Saturday to announce their campaigns. Both put tax cuts, a red-meat issue for the core of the Conservative Party, at the center of their respective agendas.
In separate interviews with the newspaper, they said they would cancel the planned increase in corporate tax and reduce it to 15% from 25%. Javid went even further by promising to scrap the payroll tax, which was introduced by his successor as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak.
Hunt, who rejected Johnson’s offer of a cabinet position in 2019, plans to emphasize his position on the backbench in parliament outside what he has called the “Boris bubble”.
They join seven other candidates, including Sunak’s successor Nadhim Zahawi, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who are vying for the top role with Sunak. The most notable absentee from the start list so far is Penny Mordaunt, the trade secretary, who was tipped as one of the favorites for the job.
The Conservatives, who are running the race, are aiming to whittle the race down to the bottom two before parliament goes into summer recess on July 21. Over the next few days, both political and personal criticism will fly and alliances will develop as the candidates seek to chip away at support from their fellow MPs who decide who goes to the run-off.
In announcing his candidacy in the Times newspaper, Johnson loyalist Shapps hit out at Sunak, who resigned around the same time as Javid on Tuesday.
“I have not spent the last few tumultuous years plotting or briefing the Prime Minister,” Shapps told the paper. “I have not mobilized a leadership campaign behind his back.”
Sunak announced his candidacy on Friday in a slick video that raised eyebrows among Tory MPs who suggested the plans had been in the works for more than a few days. And in what the Sun newspaper called the kind of dirty trick that could tarnish the race, a clip from 2007 has resurfaced online showing Sunak making a disparaging comment about the working class.
Truss will launch his bid by pledging to defend “classic conservative principles”, the Mail on Sunday reported. Mr Zahawi began his campaign with his own promise of low taxes and appeared to have received support even before he announced, including from former Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis.
Trot came just behind Sunak in an Opinium poll for Channel 4 News. He was supported by 25% and Truss by 21% in the survey of Conservative Party members who will choose from the latter two candidates.
In one of the most unexpected developments late on Saturday, a Times journalist tweeted that Tom Tugendhat, the centrist chairman of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee who has often been critical of Johnson, had won the endorsement of Anne-Marie Trevelyan. the International Trade Secretary and a key member of the right-wing European Research Group.
The other two announced candidates outside Johnson’s cabinet are the pro-Brexit attorney-general Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch, the minister of state for equalities.
Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, initially seen as the favorite to succeed Johnson, said on Saturday that he had decided not to run.
Meanwhile, Johnson will remain in office until his successor is announced, which the party says will be in September. He has appointed a caretaker government that he insists will not “make major changes in direction”.
The 1922 committee of rank-and-file Tory MPs drew up plans for a fast-track leadership contest. The two finalists will then embark on a six-week tour of the UK, and more than 100,000 Conservative Party members will decide who moves into 10 Downing Street.
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