Rishi Sunak is struggling to hold together his fractured party as the first day of the Conservative conference saw attempts at a united front collapse into rival groups battling over tax, culture wars and the fight to be the next Tory leader.
In his own carefully planned comments, the prime minister used interviews and a rally in Manchester to portray himself as a figure of change, making difficult but necessary long-term choices above the fray of petty politics.
But with the event already at risk of being overshadowed by Sunak’s continued refusal to say whether HS2 will extend to the city, away from the main conference stage a variety of noisy Tory factions jostled to have their say.
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In perhaps the most damning comment of the day, Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor and long viewed as a Tory rising star, said he would not bet on his party winning the next election.
“Not at the moment,” he said at a fringe event, adding that Sunak needed to “do more to give people the excuse” to vote Conservative.
Sunak was also coming under increasing pressure to commit to reduce tax before the election, something No 10 wants to do, but approaches with extreme caution given the fiscal repercussions of Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts.
After more than 30 largely Truss-sympathetic Conservative MPs signed a highly unusual and borderline rebellious pledge that they will not vote for an autumn statement that raises taxes, Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, called for cuts to personal taxes.
“I would like to see the tax burden reduced before the next election,” Gove told Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips programme, highlighting the extent to which even cabinet ministers are freelancing on policy issues – although he later backtracked slightly, telling GB News that inflation needed to fall first.
However the focal point of the tax row is likely to come on Monday when Truss makes her own speech to a fringe event, a year after the disastrous party conference when she was briefly prime minister.
Interviewed on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the prime minister refused to commit to tax cuts, arguing: “The best tax cut we can give working people is to halve inflation.”
During a sometimes tetchy performance, Sunak argued he was relaxed about taking office without an election and then dropping large parts of the Tories’ 2019 manifesto because he instinctively understood what the public wanted.
“I have a good sense of what the British people’s priorities are,” he said. “I’m going to set about delivering for them. And that’s the change that I’m going to bring.”
The conference has already seen policy challenges from the right of the party, at times mixed with open jockeying for position by ministers trying to position themselves as a successor to Sunak should the Conservatives lose the election.
Before the conference, Kemi Badenoch, the business…
2023-10-01 14:11:49
Article from www.theguardian.com