UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has denied Rishi Sunak’s Conservative leadership campaign was involved in “dirty tricks”.
His comments came after Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, who is supporting Liz Truss in the election, accused the former chancellor’s team of using “dark arts” to help Jeremy Hunt into the next round because “Team Rishi” believed , that Sunak would defeat Hunt in the final runoff of party members.
Shapps, who dropped out of the race to support Sunak, told Sky News: “It just, in this case, it just didn’t happen.”
He added: “Jeremy Hunt himself has said that everyone on his nomination paper are people who are very close to his campaign. So even he has failed it.
Shapps also dismissed the claim by Brexit Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg, also a Truss supporter, that Sunak was a “socialist chancellor”. “Clearly a person who is fiscally conservative wants to reduce the debt and the deficit, who wants to reduce the debt as part of the overall economy — the idea that this is a socialist is clearly not true,” he said.
Sunak’s campaign received a further boost on Wednesday morning when Health Secretary Steve Barclay said he was backing him for the leadership.
Tory MPs will have the chance to vote on Wednesday for the eight contenders vying to replace Boris Johnson as voting begins to find his successor.
Sunak, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Jeremy Hunt, Nadhim Zahawi and Suella Braverman will be on the ballot after securing the 20 nominations from fellow MPs needed to enter the race. Voting is expected to take place between 1.30pm and 3.30pm on Wednesday, with the result to be announced around 5pm. Any candidate with less than 30 votes will be eliminated.
Shapps was also asked about Sunak paying tribute to Johnson when he launched his campaign on Tuesday night, calling the prime minister a “remarkable man” despite questioning his competence, honesty and seriousness in his resignation letter.
Rishi Sunak pays tribute to ‘remarkable man’ Boris Johnson at campaign launch – video
“I think it’s clear that you can be both brilliant as an individual and flawed,” he said. “As I have pointed out many times over the last year or two, Boris Johnson is a brilliant man who has done many remarkable things, including getting us through this Brexit nightmare that we have lived through for the last six years and the way he has been one of the main world leaders, but he clearly made mistakes.
He added. “Like all of us, you can be both great and flawed. It applies to each and every one of us. There are no exceptions to this.”
Shapps denied Sunak’s praise for the prime minister was due to the leadership contender realizing there was still significant popular support for Johnson.
“I just don’t agree with it,” he said. “Rishi, myself and others worked very, very closely with the Prime Minister, even up to and near the end to try to pull things out, to try to salvage the situation.
“It does not take away from the fact that Boris Johnson is remarkable in many ways and it is a huge sadness for many voters, myself included as a member of his cabinet, that he has not been able to deliver.”
He added: “I personally thought that despite some issues, some concerns, some shortcomings, I actually thought the advantages of it outweighed it.”
On the airport strikes, Shapps said Sunak has a 22-point plan, including changing the law to speed up the processing of security clearances.
“We will also use some Brexit freedoms and ask airports to be realistic about the programs they run, all to ensure that when schools break for the summer, across the country – and they already do in parts and Scotland, for example – to make some of the airports as smooth as possible,” he said.
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Shapps also said he didn’t think it was the right time for the railroads to strike. “I don’t think that’s justified and one of the things I’ve talked about before is that we need to modernize our railways because we can’t have a situation where we can’t run weekend services because we don’t allowed to put in the contract that you sometimes work on the weekend,” he said.
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