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NINE TORIES HAVE so far put themselves forward to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, just days after a collapse in party support forced his resignation.
Former health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid have both pledged to slash corporation tax as they announced separate bids for the Tory leadership.
It comes after two serving Cabinet ministers, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, revealed their intention to run for the top job in the space of an hour.
Declaring their candidacies in The Telegraph, Mr Hunt and Mr Javid both said they would not only scrap the former chancellor’s plans to raise corporation tax from 19% to 25% in April, but reduce the rate to 15%.
Mr Hunt also attempted to differentiate himself from the crowded field with a pitch based on his decision to stay on the backbench while Mr Johnson was at the helm of the Government.
Mr Zahawi, Rishi Sunak’s successor, had said earlier this week that “everything is on the table” when questioned over the corporation tax rise.
The leadership contenders’ timescales for the change are different, with Mr Hunt slashing the tax to 15% in his first autumn Budget, while Mr Javid would set a “glide path”.
Mr Javid also said he would scrap the Government’s controversial national insurance hike, bring forward the planned 1% income tax cut to next year, and introduce a further “significant” temporary reduction on fuel duty.
The pair spelled out their economic plans in separate interviews with the newspaper.
In addition to cutting corporation tax, Mr Hunt said he would remove business rates for five years for the communities most in need.
Most of those areas are in the so-called “Red Wall” of traditional Labour heartlands, the newspaper said, with a quarter of locations in England and Wales in line for the tax break.
Scotland and Northern Ireland would get money to match the policy.
“What matters is wealth creation, which means that people don’t feel that they need to leave a Bolton or a Bolsover because they can get better jobs in Manchester or London. They can actually stay there,” Mr Hunt said.
“That means helping them have opportunities at home that makes talented people want to stay, not go.”
Meanwhile, he pledged to continue pushing legislation to overwrite parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol through Parliament.
Mr Javid said his plan for the economy would cover both short-term measures – including a new package of support worth up to £5 billion to help with energy bills – and a “longer-term” vision for tax reform.
He said: “The Government can’t prevent the impact of high price rises on everyone. You can’t mitigate everything.
“The long way out of this, the better way, is to turbo growth. I’ve always believed in free markets, in low taxation, in light regulation, as the conditions that are necessary for growth.”
Earlier, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said that after “careful consideration” and discussion with colleagues and family, he would not stand to be party leader and the next prime minister.
After careful consideration and discussing with colleagues and family, I have taken the decision not to enter the contest for leadership of the Conservative Party. I am very grateful to all my parliamentary colleagues and wider members who have pledged support. 1/2
— Rt. Hon Ben Wallace MP (@BWallaceMP)
In addition to Mr Hunt, Mr Javid, Mr Zahawi, Mr Shapps and Mr Sunak, Attorney General Suella Braverman, ex-minister Kemi Badenoch and senior Tory Tom Tugendhat have launched their own bids. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is also widely expected to stand, with the Mail on Sunday reporting she will seek to advocate “classic Conservative principles”, and could declare her candidature as soon as Monday.
Another potential front-runner is trade minister Penny Mordaunt, who announced her candidacy this morning.
Our leadership has to change. It needs to become a little less about the leader and a lot more about the ship. https://t.co/2O8T762DMT#pm4pm pic.twitter.com/Cib1w0sPBO
— Penny Mordaunt (@PennyMordaunt)
It was reported on Saturday that Mr Johnson intends to stand down as Prime Minister on Monday in order to run again for Tory leader.
But this suggestion was knocked down by a spokesperson for Mr Johnson as completely untrue.
Launching his campaign, Mr Zahawi pledged to lower taxes for individuals, families and business, boost defence spending, and continue with education reforms that he started in his previous role.
Mr Shapps said he wants to rebuild the economy so it is the biggest in Europe by 2050, and address the cost-of-living crisis.
Ms Badenoch announced a plan for a smaller state and a Government “focused on the essentials”.
The Conservative Party is the party for everyone in Britain
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Does the propaganda warhorse keep trotting on or is this just sheer negligence on the part of the police? There’s been no one there for 3 weeks so the animals clearly starved
@Skinnerbot: ha ha ha ha.. cue Big Boris racing to euthanize the pets..
@Skinnerbot: That’s pretty clearly implied by the article, and it’s stated that there’s no evidence the nerve agent played a part at all.
@Skinnerbot: how did the Russians know about the pets….. Intriguing
@JustOneScoop: Wouldn’t the mans family know about them ffs. They must have assumed the intensive investigation would have dicovered them.
@Skinnerbot: the cat they could find was euthanised and other cat hasn’t been recovered, it’s only the guinea pigs that starved/died from dehydration
@Skinnerbot: Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey collapsed with nerve agent poisoning after entering Sergei Skirpal’s house on the day Yulia and Sergei Skripal were poisoned. Obviously, for safety reasons, they then sealed the house with the pets inside.
And where did you get the idea the cat was abandoned without water for 3 weeks? Cat’s die after 4-5 days without water, so obviously the cat was rescued before then, maybe after 2 or 3 days in the house alone.
@Karen Wellington: the cat was euthanised because of malnutrition.
@Skinnerbot: If the 8th is repealed animals will have rights than humans
@cormac o neill: Reporting this account to twitter for spreading false information.
@JustOneScoop:
Apparently they also knew that the Skripals had been away from their mobile phones for four hours. Maybe I missed it but I don’t remember this being reported.
@Guy Incognito: Don’t worry that will be the next bit of BS that comes from the british propaganda camp.
@David Jordan: think that cop colllapsed near the bench in town
Dead of malnutrition and abandonment after the po po left them there. Not dead from any nerve agent. Interesting. It’s always the tiny details that mess up a seemingly good lie.
@Joe Mc mahon: The House was sealed after a Police Officer collapsed from poison. I doubt very much that the Police priority thinking was the welfare of the Guinea pigs or a cat.
@Joe Mc mahon: The highest concentrations of nerve agent was found on the door handle of the front door. There was no nerve agent in the house.
@David Jordan: look at the two Jordan brothers, gobbling up all the tripe that the beeb feeds you.
@Mick Jordan: mick, i will keep referring to the pictures of policemen in short sleeves standing right beside this heavily contaminated doorhandle for days on end. Even you at this stage must admit this whole story is a flase flag event. If even one english hooligan is injured during the world cup, there is luttle doubt the brits will use it as an excuse to sell heavy weapons to ukraine on the grounds of self defense against the big bad russians.
@Mick Jordan: Just hope the Police make a priority of the truth and are able to withstand the enevitable pressure to come up with the ‘right’ result. John Stalker comes to mind among others.
@Cal Mooney: So it’s all a conspiracy? And hundreds of people are in on it? Even the Russians and Putin himself accept that a nerve agent was used!! You really want to check back with Moscow as to what the Official line is today. The Samples of which are with the OPCW who in turn have confirmed that the chain of custody from the samples they took is secure.
@Cal Mooney:
Have you got any photos of the policemen touching the door handle with bare hands? Thought not.
@Walt Jabsco: It gets confusining for poor Cal, with Russia pumping out so many different stories (24 at the last count), it’s hard for him to keep up on what the Official Russian line is at any given moment.
@Ixion99: So you agree the Russian Government is lying!! Good to read.
@Cal Mooney: Policeman in short sleeves in March. Interesting.
The UK government and their rotten controlled MSM are pathetic at this stage…….egg on the face to the western governments and shame on this republics government Simon Coveney and the like.
@noBankAccBertie: are you a bit of a bot or just bitter?
This makes zero sense – on the other Journal Skripal article this morning, all the Russian accounts posting comments told us that the pets were fine and that therefore it wasn’t beautiful, superior Russia who did this and the real issue was that Britain wouldn’t answer mother Russia’s legitimate questions…
Seriously, every news site is filled with pro russian, Britain skeptical accounts flooding every article.
@Ciaran Ó Fallúin: I think they’re just typical conspiracy theorists. I doubt there’s a Russian plot to influence the comments section of the journal.
@Toomasu Sumitsu: Then why the sudden influx of new accounts that as soon as they have gained access to the Journal just to write on subjects Russian, have been deleted? Suspicious No?
@Ixion99: Why would you feel the need to delete the FB or Twitter accounts as soon as you opened the Journal account unless you wished to hide something, such as the account only being generated for the single purpose of getting access to the Journal.
@Toomasu Sumitsu: The voting patterns on the comments, particularly the speed of upvotes early on looks outright suspicious to me. Those voting anomalies e.g. rapid early upvotes, followed by complete stagnation while upvotes on responses challenging or other comments continues for hours, are not restricted to Russia articles. It happens on certain articles for Trump too, foreign policy ones mostly. It’s interesting… God I miss red thumbs! They were the only thing that made the journal comments worth reading because they gave people a voice – most of the time, it’s not worth replying or challenging, so that site has gone malignant.
@Ciaran Ó Fallúin:
Agreed – a chart of voting patterns over time on various stories would be very interesting and possibly revealing. It would be easy enough for the Journal techies to do. Maybe they should take a serious look at this – it would make for an interesting article in itself.
@Ciaran Ó Fallúin: Actually the removal of down thumbs in itself was a strong indicator of troll farming. Before their removal, an automated checking system had been written to down vote left leaning western comments and up thumb pro Russian right wing comments. After their removal, the code was redundant and for 6 or 7 weeks pro Russian and right leaning comments were rooted to the bottom after which point, the auto like code had been rewritten and bang, right to the top again, imagine that :)
@Ciaran Ó Fallúin: If say the Journal was to switch to rating each comment out of 5, my money would be that the same pattern would repeat itself. Pro Russian comments would get no support for a few weeks until a new code is written, compatible with the function change. For anyone questioning why would Russia even bother, the Journal has over a million installs. All it takes is one talented programmer to be paid €10,000 a year to completely muddle comments and public perception for up to 1 million people. Outstanding return on investment and hard to track.
@Tom Cullen: I guess there are any number of ways the Journal could discourage such behaviour – use of captcha, not allowing account under a certain age comment, not allowing the use of facebook/twitter to login instead sending an auto generated password to new registrants which they have to reset etc. etc. Problem is, each one of those punishes genuine contributors too. I guess there is a balance to be struck, however I would see this getting to the point where they withdraw the comment facility completely given the proliferation of sock puppets and also the more litigious tendencies of the subjects of articles.
@Darragh Murray: You can start now making a list of posters to be banned, what do you want totalitarianism?
@Mick Jordan: Your logic is on par with your age most likely. Some people do not use twitter or facebook. It is only predictable that in order to comment here one can create an account and delete it afterward. Some people simply do not want to be tracked by fb and twitter for eternity.
My fb account I do use to comment here is as bare as central bank coffers.
Only fools would be posting everything they do on a platform which is used to monetize everything you do.
This is getting petty, so am I to believe that the Russian government is concerned about 2 cats & 2 Guinea pigs?
@paddlingAlong:
Deflect, Distract, Deny….
He was not Russian Spy…. He was caught spying for the British
These supposed Russian ‘deadly’ nerve agents used on the Skripals doesn’t seem to be as deadly as made out.
So far no one is dead despite being told there is no cure for novichok poisoning, and then the authorities allowed the pets to suffer from simple neglect.
The British Science Laboratory has confirmed it is not possible to determine where the poison came from. The death and disappearance of pets adds to suspicions. Let’s hope the survivors can throw light on the real culprits.
Quick…….more sanctions
So damn Russians killed pets is the latest installment, dastardly villains!
You couldn’t make this shite up!
Or could you?
Insensitive Brits kill Skripals pets…headline for Pravda or whatever they read in Russia today
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