Rishi Sunak admits ‘I’m the underdog’ ahead of Tory leadership hustings with Liz Truss – UK politics live

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are poised to go head to head in the first official hustings with Tory members in Leeds, PA Media reports. PA says:

It is the first of 12 sessions for party faithful across the country to quiz the final two candidates before voting for the next party leader and prime minister closes on 2 September.

The two-hour hustings will be broadcast on LBC radio from 7pm and hosted by presenter Nick Ferrari.

The event takes place in Leeds, where Truss was hoping to shore up voters’ support by backing Northern Powerhouse Rail in full and pledging to “turbocharge investment” into the north of England.

During a visit to the Yorkshire city, Truss insisted she is “completely committed” to the scheme to improve rail connections between Liverpool and Leeds, which was originally announced by Boris Johnson but subsequently scaled back.

She told reporters: “I grew up in Leeds, I know how poor the transport is and frankly, it’s not got much better since I was a teenager getting the bus into Leeds city centre. What I want to see is really fantastic rail services, better roads so people are able to get into work”.

Asked how she would afford the scheme, given the vast tax cuts she has pledged, Truss said: “The taxes that I am cutting are affordable within our budget.By creating new low tax investment zones in places like West Yorkshire, by enabling the post-Brexit reforms to take place, unleashing more investment from the city, we will grow the economy faster – that will bring in more tax revenue, and that will enable us to afford those projects”.

She also promised to “fix the Treasury’s funding formula” if she gets the keys to No 10 to make sure the region gets a “fairer share” of resources.

Truss took a thinly veiled swipe at Sunak, who is the MP for the North Yorkshire seat of Richmond, when she was asked whether he was as committed to the rail project, saying: “The thing about me is I’m prepared to take on the Whitehall orthodoxy, I’m prepared to challenge the groupthink that has, over decades, not put enough investment into this part of the country.”

There are two long interviews with Rishi Sunak out today. He has spoken to Charles Moore for a Spectator interview, and to Andrew Gimson and William Atkinson for a ConservativeHome one. Here are the main points.

• Sunak said the Conservative party should negotiate a protocol for leadership debates with broadcasters to minimise the risk of debates damaging the party’s reputation. He told ConHome:

I think there might be an argument for the party negotiating on behalf of all candidates together with the broadcasters. That might be a sensible thing if the party sets the rules of the contest in general.

Because there’s two competing things we’re trying to balance. One is a genuine need for scrutiny of candidates, and that is entirely reasonable and fair, because ultimately this person is going to become prime minister.

“But that need for scrutiny needs to be balanced with need as well to make sure that our party is not doing things that essentially write Labour’s next leaflets for them.

• He implied that he would prefer to negotiate a solution to the problems with the Northern Ireland protocol with the EU than go ahead with implementing the NI protocol bill, that allows the UK government to unilaterally ignore parts of the protocol. He told the Spectator:

There are some very real challenges with the arrangements that are in place currently. I’d like to see those fixed and the protocol bill gives us an opportunity to do that. But the door should always be there for a negotiated settlement with Europe, not least because it is a lot faster.

• He refused to describe Boris Johnson as a liar in his Spectator interview, but, explaining why he resigning from government he said Johnson was not telling the truth about the Chris Pincher affair. Asked if Johnson was lying, Sunak said:

It’s unclear exactly what happened, but it was clear to me that what was said was not accurately reflective of what seemed to have happened.

• Sunak told the Spectator that his camaign launch video was put together in 24 hours. The video was so polished that it was widely assumed it could not have been produced that quickly. But Sunak told the Spectator:

I can honestly say with hand on heart that that video was put together in 24 hours. And I get a lot of criticism when people say: ‘Oh, gosh, it’s all very slick and professional.’ I think being professional is a good thing. I think being professional at things is something that we should celebrate and actually we need more of it.

• He rejected claimed that he was the candidate of orthodox thinking. He told the Spectator that, when economic orthodoxy said the government could go on borrowing lavishly because interest rates would stay low, he did not accept that, because he thought they were bound to rise.

• He told ConHome that it was “pretty clear” that he was the underdog in the contest. He said:

I think it’s pretty clear I’m the underdog. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

Jake Berry, the Conservative MP who chairs the Northern Research Group, which represents Tory MPs in the north, has declared that he is backing Liz Truss for the leadership.

His endorsement coincides with Truss saying she will build Northern Powerhouse Rail if she becomes PM, as my colleague Josh Halliday reports.

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has expressed concern about Keir Starmer’s decision to sack Sam Tarry. In an interview with GB News, Burnham said there was a risk of the party appearing not to be on the side of working people. Commenting on the sacking of Tarry, he said:

Labour needs to be careful here. We can’t ever be a party that undermines working people fighting to protect their incomes and a cost of living crisis.

If we’re not careful, that’s how we might come over. There’s a real issue out there now for people in terms of wages and energy bills that keep rising.

People are going to have to fight to protect their incomes and Labour should be supporting people to protect their incomes.

Starmer insists that Tarry was sacked not because he showed his support for striking RMT members, but because he gave interviews in which he contradicted party policy. (See 1.11pm.)

Kevin Lindsay, Scottish organiser for the train drivers’ union Aslef, has announced that he has resigned from the Labour party following the sacking yesterday of Sam Tarry. Lindsay also says he will now be backing calls for the union to disaffiliate from Labour. In his resignation letter to the party he said:

The Labour party was and is meant to be the political wing of the trade union movement but now it’s more interested in trying woo Tory voters in the shires of England than representing working people.

As a democrat, I respect that Keir Starmer has been elected the leader but I truly believe his performance and policies are making it impossible for the Labour party to return to power and that he should be removed from his position immediately. There needs to be a change in leadership and political direction but I sadly can’t see this happening and we will end up with PM Truss for several years.

Therefore I have made the decision not only to resign from the Labour party but now also support the proposal for Aslef to disaffiliate from the party.

And here are some more lines from what Keir Starmer said to reporters during his Birmingham visit when asked about his approach to trade unions and strikes.

• Starmer said he would take “each case as it comes” when deciding whether to allow frontbenchers to join picket lines. In the past shadow ministers have been told not to appear on picket lines. Asked if they could support RMT pickets during the strike on Saturday, provided they did not give unauthorised interviews, Starmer replied: “We take each case as it comes. I want to see these issues resolved.” He also said the role of a “responsible government” was to get the key players around the table to resolve the issues.

I think she’s completely wrong about that. What we need to do is to improve the rights of working people. That’s why we’ve drafted a whole set of employment rights from day one for working people.

• He refused to say whether he would back calls for a general strike if Truss tried to implement her plans. But he said unions were right to stick up for their members. Asked about the prospect of some sort of coordinated strike action (see 9.58am), and whether he would approve, he said:

It’s quite right for trade unions to stick up for their members and to fight for their members. Of course, it is. And it’s their members who are really struggling under this cost-of-living crisis.

So, of course, trade unions are right to stick up for support and negotiate on behalf of their members. I’m fully supportive of that, working with our trade unions.

• He said the trade unions would “always” be part of the labour movement.

• He said he expected the Unite union to continue to have a relationship with the Labour party. Unite is Labour’s biggest donor and its general secretary, Sharon Graham, has been particularly critical of the decision to sack Sam Tarry. She posted these messages on Twitter yesterday.

Asked if he was worried about Unite withdrawing funding from the party, Starmer said:

The Unite union and the Labour party have a very strong relationship.

I am a member of the Unite union. That relationship is historic, it is present, and it will be the future of the Labour party.

They work with us on our employment rights’ draft legislation, which is, you know, the most comprehensive set of employment rights that we have ever seen coming out of the Labour party.

Keir Starmer has said Sam Tarry was sacked as shadow transport minister because he “made up policy on the hoof”. Speaking on a visit to Birmingham, Starmer said:

Sam Tarry was sacked because he booked himself onto media programmes without permission, and then made up policy on the hoof, and that can’t be tolerated in any organisation because we’ve got collective responsibility. So that was relatively straightforward.

Of course, as far as the industrial action is concerned, I completely understand the frustration of so many working people who’ve seen the prices go up, seen inflation through the roof, and their wages haven’t gone up.

So the Labour party will always be on the side of working people, but we need collective responsibility, as any organisation does.

Starmer was referring in particular to an interview Tarry gave yesterday in which he said people like rail workers should not get below-inflation pay rises. That is not party policy.

Boris Johnson has mocked Rishi Sunak, his former chancellor, for announcing a U-turn this week and proposing to scrap VAT on fuel bills for a year.

In a speech at the Commonwealth Business Forum in Birmingham, the outgoing prime minister acknowledged that he was leaving office sooner than he wanted. He told his audience:

We come now to the next stage in the great relay race of politics.

I didn’t think it was meant to be a relay race, by the way, when I started.

I can assure you that the baton is going to be passed seamlessly and invisibly to the hand of somebody else.

I’ll give you this assurance, they will continue with the same programme, cutting taxes, simplifying regulation as much as possible, taking advantage of all our new regulatory freedoms, getting rid of every encumbrance from solvency to MiFID to VAT on fuel – turns out to be easier than we thought.

Johnson has said almost nothing in public about the candidates vying to succeed him – even though it is an open secret that he favours Liz Truss. He feels betrayed by Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor precipitated a flood of resignations by ministers and ministerial aides that led to Johnson realising they would have to quit.

When Sunak was still at the Treasury, some in No 10 felt he was unreasonably blocking measures that would help people with the cost of living. During the 2016 referendum Johnson said the government would abolish VAT on fuel bills after the UK left the EU, but Sunak blocked proposals to do that earlier this year, arguing that it was better to target help for the poor than implement a tax cut that would be particularly helpful to wealthy people heating large houses.

Sunak announced his U-turn on Tuesday night. He said had had changed his mind in the light of evidence that the energy price cap is now expected to rise above £3,000 in October, but the announcement was also interpreted as a panic move from a candidate who fears he is losing.

Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor and Tory leadership candidate, has announced that he would tighten planning rules to further restrict building on the green belt if he be became prime minister. He would also stop local authorities removing land from the green belt.

Citing an interview that Liz Truss, his rival, gave in 2019, in which she said 1m homes should be built on the London green belt, Sunak also claimed that this was now a policy area where the difference between the two candidates was “huge”.

Under planning rules for England, development can be allowed on the green belt in “very special circumstances”. Sunak says that if a local community judged such development inappropriate, he would not allow that decision to be overruled in any circumstances.

He says he would block the “loophole” that allows councils to take some land out of the green belt so that it can be freed up for development. As a result, the green belt has shrunk by 1%, he says.

But he also says he would change planning rules to make building on brownfield sites easier.

In a statement he says:

Green belt land is extremely precious in the UK. Over the last few years we’ve seen too many examples of local councils circumventing the views of residents by taking land out of the green belt for development, but I will put a stop to it.

Under my plans, if a local community has clearly judged a development to be inappropriate there are no circumstances in which planning permission should be granted.

More homes can be built while protecting the green belt and our most precious landscapes. Data shows that well over a million homes could be built across the country on brownfield sites with particularly high capacity in the north-west, Yorkshire and the West Midlands.

These places are crying out for new homes and a combination of building here and more inner-city densification will help us provide the housing that the UK needs, whilst protecting the countryside around our towns and cities.