Liz Truss tells Tories to not dump Rishi Sunak earlier than election
Ex-PM Liz Truss has said the Tories shouldn’t dump Rishi Sunak before the general election – despite slating his policies.
The former Tory leader said changing the leader was “not the right answer” after the party’s worst result at the local elections in 40 years. Instead, she said the PM should focus on “core Conservative policies” and dump proposals such as a ban on youngsters from ever taking up smoking.
The comments from the 49-day PM came as a plot to oust Mr Sunak from office appeared to fizzle out last week in the aftermath of the local and mayoral elections. The Tories suffered the loss of nearly 500 councillors while the Conservative Mayor for the West Midlands Andy Street was toppled in a string of victories for Keir Starmer’s Labour.
But Conservative MPs clung on to Ben Houchen’s victory in Tees Valley – despite Labour narrowing the gap – as a reason not to ditch Mr Sunak. Speaking at an event hosted by Popular Conservatives alongside her former economic guru Mark Littlewood, Ms Truss claimed there was “far too much focus” on who leads the party.
The ex-PM added: “We shouldn’t have a leadership election before the general election. Changing the leader again is not the right answer. The right answer is being honest about where we are now, being honest about the really deep changes that need to be made to the governance of Britain and to be proud of Conservative policies.”
But in a swipe at Mr Sunak’s smoking ban proposal, she went on: “Not confuse people by advocating the ban of people smoking when they are 30 in the future – this kind of stuff.” She added the party needed to “junk all that stuff”, focus on “core Conservative policies” and select “strong Conservatives” to run for Parliament before the election.
At the weekend sacked Home Secretary Suella Braverman also launched a savage attack on Mr Sunak’s leadership of the party after the local elections disaster. But she also stopped short of calling for the PM to go, admitting there is no “Superman or Superwoman” ready to take on the huge challenge.
She said: “I talk to many of my colleagues who are privately demoralised and incredibly concerned about their prospects. You know, we’ll be lucky to have any Conservative MPs at the next election and we need to fight.”
Addressing the local election results yesterday, Mr Sunak admitted his disappointment but insisted the result of the general election was not a “foregone conclusion”. He also faced ridicule after he claimed the “results suggest we are heading for a hung Parliament” with “ Keir Starmer propped up in Downing Street by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Greens”.
Ben Page of pollster Ipsos said the hung parliament prediction was “for the birds”, adding: “If you look at the swing in Blackpool South… you look at these local election results, which we haven’t seen anything of this kind since just before Labour won a landslide in 1997.”
