Truss’s cost of living policies could be ‘electoral suicide note’ for Tories, says Raab – UK politics live

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Paul Scully, the business minister, has been giving interviews this morning on behalf of the Liz Truss campaign. Referring to the Dominic Raab article in the Times (see 9.13am), Scully critcised the Rishi Sunak campaign for negative campaigning. He told Times Radio:

It’s a shame that we’re hearing that sort of language. That sort of blue-on-blue, as it’s always known, language doesn’t really help. People looking from the outside must be tearing their hair out because all we want to do is do the best for the country, for people.

Scully also defended Truss’s cost of living proposals (described by Raab as a potential “electoral suicide note” for the Tories). He said:

What Liz has said is the right thing to do, the Conservative thing to do, is don’t take the money from people in the first place, rather than just taking money to give it back to them …

Ofgem will be deciding the price cap in the next few weeks. And at that point, we can make a quick decision … We clearly need to support people as best we can.

Liz is far more bold, ambitious, she’s more optimistic for the economy. And the combination of targeted tax cuts, and targeted support can help both the short term and grow the economy for the medium term solutions.

As Annabelle Dickson reports in her London Playbook briefing for Politico, in private the Truss camp response to the “electoral suicide” article is much stronger. “The suicide note here is Rishi’s high taxes and his failed economic policy that he’s peddled for the past two and a half years when he was chancellor,” they are saying.

Good morning. At 7pm this evening Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will speak at the fifth official Conservative party hustings. Tom Newton Dunn from TalkTV is in the chair, and the event may give some insight into how both candidates appeal in “red wall” territory. The Tories won Darlington in 2019, but until then it had been a Labour seat since 1992. It is a key target seat for the opposition.

Truss and Sunak will also come under pressure to clarify exactly what they would do to help people cope with crippling energy bills later this year. A column in the Sun yesterday said Britain was “on the brink of a full-blown calamity of wartime proportions”. In a statement released overnight Sunak went further than he has gone before in saying that essentially he would replicate the support package he announced earlier this year as chancellor. He said:

People need proven methods that will deliver for them quickly. So I will use the framework I created to provide further support and give millions of people the peace of mind they desperately need ahead of the winter.

In fact, Sunak announced three energy support packages in the first half of this year, but the briefing note from his campaign only refers to the ?15bn May package, implying that this will be the model. Economists praised these measures as “highly progressive”, saying they would help the poor the most.

Truss has been less clear about what she would do. Her team has said that an interview she gave to the Financial Times at the end of last week, in which she said that she wanted to “do things is in a Conservative way of lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts”, did not mean that she was ruling out providing people with Sunak-style one-off payments. But she insists that her primary focus remains on helping people via tax cuts.

This morning the Guardian has splashed on a story by my colleague Rowena Mason about the criticism “Trussonomics” is getting from economists and others who say that her plans might cost ?50bn a year, while failing to protect those most at risk from the cost of living crisis.

You can read Rowena’s story here.

And it turns out the Rishi Sunak camp largely agree with the experts quoted by Rowena. Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, deputy PM and a leading Sunak supporter, has written an article for the Times today and in it he claims that Truss’s policies would amount to an “electoral suicide note” for the Tories because voters would not forgive the party for not helping the most vulnerable. He says:

Deep down, we know that the aftereffects of a global pandemic, compounded by a war on our near shores, are having a palpable impact on people up and down the country. That is why, in addition to bearing ruthlessly down on inflation, it is wrong to rule out further direct support for families worried and unsure how they will make ends meet in the coming months. It is why it is right that we consider carefully how we step in and shield them from the full force of the global economic headwinds we now face. We must tackle these problems in a way that doesn’t drive up borrowing, and therefore inflation – and with our medium-term focus constantly fixed on that goal of reducing taxes and making taxpayers’ money go further. That is the economic tightrope we must walk, and there’s no avoiding it …

As Conservative party members decide which way to cast their vote over the coming weeks, I urge them to consider this point carefully. If we go to the country in September with an emergency budget that fails to measure up to the task, voters will not forgive us as they see their living standards eroded and the financial security they cherish disappear before their eyes. Such a failure will read unmistakenly to the public like an electoral suicide note and see our great party cast into the impotent oblivion of opposition.

I’ll be here all day, reporting on this debate as it unfolds, and I will be covering the hustings in Darlington tonight.

Otherwise the diary is relatively empty, although Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, is speaking at an event at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at 12pm, which may provide some news.

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