Many of the MPs appointed to Boris Johnson’s first cabinet were those who backed him in the 2019 leadership race that propelled him to power.
Political advantage in going public
The flurry of recent high-profile endorsements – four former Tory leadership rivals have backed Ms Truss in the past week – suggests some see political advantages in going public with support now.
Sajid Javid became the latest of this group to back Ms Truss, after Nadhim Zahawi, the chancellor, Penny Mordaunt, the trade secretary, and Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee common
Javid, the former chancellor and health secretary, had been in charge of the Treasury when Sunak was effectively his deputy, filling the role of chief secretary to the Treasury. The pair were believed to have been politically and personally close.
Mr Javid did a round of broadcast interviews on Thursday morning backing Ms Truss. He said in one: “I think Liz is best placed to bring the party together, fix the economy and beat Labor at the next election.”
Announcing his support on Wednesday, Javid wrote in The Times: “In the long term, we are more likely to be fiscally sustainable by improving trend growth. Only by returning growth to pre-financial crisis levels can we hope to support public services high quality that people rightly expect. Some argue that tax cuts can only come when we have growth. I believe just the opposite: tax cuts are a prerequisite for growth.
“Of course, we need more than that, especially major supply-side reform, but tax cuts are now essential. There are no risk-free options in government. However, in my view, not cutting taxes carries a risk even bigger
“With just two years before the next election, there has been a temptation to ‘take the barnacles out of the boat’ and avoid any short-term political pain for long-term national gain. We must reject this. As a nation we are sleepwalking into a large-state, high-tax, low-growth, social-democratic model that risks us becoming a middle-income economy by the 2030s with a loss of global influence and power “.