By Stefan Boscia
A close ally of Rishi Sunak attacked Liz Truss today over her plans to hold an emergency Budget in September as the foreign secretary steps up her preparations for entering Number 10.
Mel Stride, one of Sunak’s campaign whips, wrote to the Treasury in his role as chair of Westminster’s Treasury Select Committee to say any coming fiscal announcement must be scrutinised by the UK’s budgetary watchdog.
It comes after suggestions that Truss’ planned emergency Budget next month, if she wins the Tory leadership race, will not come with the customary Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) analysis.
A Truss campaign source told The Sun that Stride was using “using taxpayer resources to launch a political attack” and that “Liz wants to cut taxes as soon as she can, something Rishi has no experience of”.
Truss and her team have been busy planning her first 100 days in office over the past week, with all polling of Tory members suggesting she will easily beat Sunak to become Prime Minister.
She is expected to hold an emergency Budget or a smaller scale fiscal announcement next month, which will include tax cuts worth tens of billions of pounds.
This is expected to include a reversal of this year’s 1.25 percentage point increase in National Insurance for employees and employers.
There may also be help for households facing soaring energy bills this autumn and winter, with Truss’ allies now indicating this would likely come in the form of direct payments.
Truss has also been putting together her cabinet, with Kwasi Kwarteng tipped to become the next chancellor.
James Cleverly and Suella Braverman are expected to occupy the two other great offices of state as foreign and home secretary respectively.
It has been speculated that Therese Coffey will be made chief whip and that Ben Wallace will remain in post as defence secretary.
Truss has said that she will offer Sunak a post in her government if she wins, however the former chancellor indicated yesterday that he would turn it down.
Reflecting on his time working under Boris Johnson, Sunak told the BBC “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,” he said.
Who could be in a potential Truss cabinet?
Kwasi Kwarteng
Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is considered a lock for chancellor and has already begun to drop hints about his future plans. He wrote in the Mail on Sunday that “help is coming” this winter for households facing further increases in energy bills in an article that read a lot like a fiscal intervention from a chancellor.
Kwarteng has been close allies with Truss since the pair entered parliament in 2010 and the pair are vocal free-marketeers on the soft-ish right of the party. They co-wrote, along with other Tory rising stars, Britannia Unchained in 2012. The book is a call for the UK to adopt radical free market policies, which had the infamous line that British workers are among the “worst idlers in the world”.
Kwarteng was hired into junior ministerial roles in the Treasury and Brexit Department by Theresa May, however his political career really took off after Boris Johnson was made Prime Minister in 2019. Kwarteng was rewarded for his long-time support of Johnson with a senior ministerial role in the Business Department, before he was then made business secretary last year.
He has been a critic of Rishi Sunak’s tax policies and he voiced public opposition to the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas. It is expected that he will slash taxes by £30bn+ immediately, however he may find Truss’ proposition of funding them through borrowing a hard sell to Treasury boffins.
James Cleverly
Loyal Boris Johnson ally James Cleverly is rumoured to be in line for a promotion to foreign secretary, after serving as a minister in the department for two-and-a-half years. He was an early backer of Truss’ leadership campaign and was leading boozy celebrations on the Westminster terrace when she made the final two of the race.
Cleverly sat in cabinet as Conservative party chair in the lead-up to the 2019 election, but was moved to a ministerial role in the Foreign Office shortly after. He was made education secretary after Johnson resigned in order to fill the gaping holes in cabinet.
He has already worked closely with Truss in her time as foreign secretary and the two are aligned on key foreign policy positions. Like Truss, Cleverly is a China hawk and has often spoken out on Beijing’s ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs.
Suella Braverman
The attorney general has been one of the big winners from the Tory leadership contest. Suella Braverman was the butt of many jokes when she announced her candidacy for the leadership, however it turned out to be a masterstroke.
The right-winger is rumoured to be Truss’ choice for home secretary, after delivering her a large chunk of the right in the initial MP leadership votes. Braverman became the choice of the European Research Group (ERG) of Brexiteer Tory MPs and will be seen as one of their champions in cabinet.
She has been on the frontline of the culture war and has often made interventions in the “war on woke”. She is a staunch supporter of the government’s Rwanda immigration policy and has called for the UK to leave the European Court of Human Rights.
Ben Wallace
Ben Wallace will likely remain in post as defence secretary, after winning plaudits for his handling of the UK response to the Russo-Ukraine war. He was expected to run for the leadership himself, after topping initial polls of Tory members, but decided to back Truss instead after she made the final two.
Wallace’s endorsement was considered a big prize, such is his popularity, and it won’t have come without some strings attached. Wallace and Truss together lobbied Johnson for increases in defence funding in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Truss has now pledged that the UK will spend 3 per cent of GDP on defence – something that will be music to Wallace’s ears.
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