Boris Johnson is refusing to answer or return calls from Rishi Sunak a month after he resigned from the Cabinet, the former chancellor told a hustings event.
Asked by The Telegraph’s associate editor Camilla Tominey, who moderated the two-hour session, whether he had spoken to the Prime Minister since quitting, he said he had messaged him and tried calling, but “perhaps not surprisingly” Mr Johnson had not replied.
Mr Sunak and Liz Truss faced the biggest audience yet of the Tory leadership race as 1,800 Conservative Party members subjected them to a forensic examination in Cheltenham.
The sixth hustings event marked the halfway point of the candidates’ tour of Britain.
Cost of living, energy and the economy
Mr Sunak stuck to his guns on refusing to lower taxes and was applauded when he said it was not right “to put £50 billion on the credit card and leave it for the children and grandchildren to pay off”.
“In this leadership race I haven’t always said the things that people may want to hear,” he said. “But I’ve said the things that people need to hear. Because our country faces real challenges and I want to be straight with you and everyone else about what’s going to be required to fix those.”
Asked how she would help people struggling to pay energy bills that are expected to top £4,200 a year and possibly even £5,000, Ms Truss said: “What we shouldn’t be doing is taking money off people in taxes and giving it back to them in benefits.
“I would reverse the NI [National Insurance] increase and focus on energy supply because this is an energy crisis… We can still afford to pay for the NHS and social care out of general taxation and still pay down our debt starting within three years. I believe that people should keep more of their own money.”
She added: “One thing I absolutely don’t support is a windfall tax. It’s a Labour idea. It’s all about bashing business and it sends the wrong message.”
Ms Truss said she would support fracking where there was local support, would “reform” the BBC licence fee and keep the net zero pledge.
Fighting the next general election
Ms Truss began her opening statement by telling the audience about her “dark secret” of joining the Liberal Democrats as a teenager.
The Foreign Secretary said she “learned all of their dark secrets and dirty tricks” and promised that as prime minister, she would re-establish the Lib Dem unit at Conservative Campaign Headquarters “to make sure we have a crack force” to stop them from getting elected again in Cheltenham and elsewhere.
Ms Truss, who said she would not call an election before 2024, vowed to oversee a “less presidential Number 10” in remarks that will be seen as a veiled dig at Mr Johnson.
Mr Sunak told the audience: “In two years, we have to make British political history by winning a fifth election in a row.”
He billed himself as the candidate who is most likely to appeal to swing voters and beat Labour at the next election.
Playing on the threat to seats across the South West from the Lib Dems, he said: “We have to appeal to swing voters everywhere.
“In rural areas and urban areas, in Brexit areas and Remain areas, in liberal-leaning areas and Labour-leaning areas, I passionately believe – and the evidence supports – that I am the candidate that gives our party the best opportunity in beating Labour and the Liberals and ensuring that Keir Starmer never walks through the door of 10 Downing Street.”
Drought and climate change
Ms Truss said that she would be “much tougher” on water companies, “particularly on leaks and on emitting nasty pollutants into rivers”.
She said: “In Norfolk, we have some fantastic chalk streams, and they are very very precious, and we need to do all we can to make sure they’re protected. So I would make sure the water companies are held to account and also make sure we are dealing with the effluent that is going into our waterways.
“I think the problem with a lot of utility regulation is we were one of the first countries to privatise utilities, and we created these regulators. But over time, they have become less effective at doing the job and, in some cases, they’re not promoting enough growth and competition as well, so I would review the regulators and how they’re operating.”
However, she is not a fan of solar panels taking up space in farmers’ fields, saying it was “depressing” to see “fields that should be full of crops or livestock filled with solar panels”.
She wanted farmers to “focus efforts” on producing food.
Earlier, Mr Sunak had said that “water companies can and must step up to address leakage and mains bursts…when it comes to enforcement, nothing is off the table”.
Personal scrutiny
Mr Sunak tried to make light of his betrayal of Mr Johnson by saying that he was always asked about his relationship with the Prime Minister.
“Just the other day, this lady came to me and said ‘You and Boris are very different aren’t you?’” he said. “I thought ‘yes, let’s see where this is going to go’. She said ‘he looks like he’s lost his hairbrush, but you look like your mum’s brushed your hair’.”
He also said that he had tried to contact Mr Johnson since he resigned as chancellor, but “not surprisingly” his calls had neither been answered nor returned.
The audience booed the moderator when she asked Mr Sunak why he would not step down from the contest to allow Ms Truss to take over and get the country moving. He said: “I’m fighting for what I believe in. I’m going to fight to the last day with everything I’ve got.”
Asked why she always dresses like Margaret Thatcher, Ms Truss said: “I am my own person.”
She questioned why female politicians are asked about how they look while their male colleagues are subjected to far less scrutiny.
“I do think it’s a thing about being a woman in politics,” she said. “I hope you are going to ask Rishi Sunak, is he comparing himself to Ted Heath or to a male politician?”
Brexit opportunities and immigration
Mr Sunak, who campaigned for Vote Leave, said that he was “puzzled” by accusations from some quarters that he is not enough of a Brexiteer.
“I keep reading that somehow I’m not Brexity enough in this leadership race,” he said. “I do think I was the one that actually voted and campaigned for Brexit in the first place.
“I’ve radically set up new freeports across the country, an idea that I came up with, that right now are attracting jobs and investment to places that desperately need it.”
He added: “My business experience means I can lead our economy into the future and seize those opportunities that are there waiting for us if we are prepared to be bold and ambitious about grabbing them.”
Ms Truss said that she was “pretty equivocal at the time” on Brexit in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, in which she voted Remain, and she “wasn’t sure”. She said that she was “concerned about the potential disruption” of leaving the EU.
Ms Truss said that she would not introduce an “arbitrary” cap on immigration because: “I think we should have the skills we need in our country, but I don’t believe in an arbitrary target and when we had one before it didn’t work.”
She said she would pull Britain out of the European Court of Human Rights, which is not part of the EU, adding: “If we need to, but I’d rather legislate through the British Bill of Rights.”
Asked how many post-Brexit trade deals were now in force, she said there were “just over 70” and that some had provided UK firms with “better deals than they’d had under the EU”.
“I would love the media to spend more time talking about trade deals rather than about political rows,” she added.
