Former chancellor Sajid Javid backed Liz Truss for the role of Prime Minister.
The former leadership rival who withdrew his bid last month before voting stages began, said that Truss was the best fit to rise to “the challenges of our age”.
Javid pledged his support at the Cardiff third leadership hustings. Rishi Sunak, Lis Truss and others spoke to the Conservative party to try to win their support.
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Sunak will be hurt by this endorsement, as he and Javid are friends. It was their resignations that led to the downfall Johnson and his cabinet.
During his endorsement, Javid called for urgent tax cuts in an attack on her rival Rishi Sunak’s economic plans. He said that Sunak’s plans would make the UK a “middle-income economy”.
Sunak said that tax cuts could lead to higher inflation, if they were done before inflation is dealt with first. His rival Liz Truss claimed that the country could not “tax its way to growth” and insisted that modest tax cuts weren’t inflationary.
The main pitting-point between the two is their vision on how to deal with the economic crisis, but it seems that Truss’s plans are currently more popular, with polls continuing to suggest that she is the frontrunner.
The hustings event at Cardiff was the first time either candidate had visited Wales in the years since the leadership contest began. Swansea-born Michael Howard introduced Sunak, while David Jones (Clwyd West MP) introduced Truss. Jones is a prominent Brexiteer in the party.
Ms Truss later described the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford as a “low energy version of Jeremy Corbyn”. Many did not like her comment. Some even drew on her comments about Nicola Sturgeon earlier in the week.
Liz Truss’s pay-cut policy U-turn was discussed, with Sunak saying he was glad Truss had abandoned the plan as “It would have meant, I think, potentially almost half a million workers in Wales getting a pay cut, which I don’t think is the right policy to pursue.”
Sunak, however, appeared to reverse his own policy of scrapping plans to relax the ban in England on onshore wind.
He was asked if he would scrap the embargo on onshore wind” and replied “yes”, adding that “we’ve already said that we are open to do that where we can do it with local communities”.
But, his campaign later clarified that he had “misspoken” and would not relax the ban.
The pair will be back in debate on Sky News tonight.
