Mrs Truss’s position on the tax cuts and their relative merits has been well publicized this week. Minus his stance on spending. He told reporters at a news conference Thursday that he was not considering cutting spending.
But would that mean keeping public spending rising to its highest level for 50 years, a part of Sunak’s legacy that Truss supporters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit minister, have called her a “socialist chancellor”?
Pressed for more details, Ms Truss said she would carry out a spending review along with an emergency budget if she wins. But he played down the possibility of reducing departmental spending, which has been set for 2024.
However, it suggests that social spending is an area where savings could be found. “The best way to reduce social spending is to help people work, and that’s my priority,” he said.
“We have people who are not currently working. We also have a large number of vacancies and a high demand for staff. So we need to get the right skills, the right training, help people into work, encourage people into work, give them the support they need to get into work. This is how we manage to reduce the welfare budget. But these things take time.”
One spending promise by Boris Johnson that he is keeping is the extra £36bn he put into the NHS and social care, even as he reverses the money-raising tool – the 1.25 per cent of the national insurance that started this April.
It is not yet clear when the money, initially given to the NHS, will be moved to help fund the new social care approach of containing lifetime costs. Many commentators and Tory MPs hope that the withdrawal of money from the NHS, as planned, will never happen.
But Mrs Truss is determined to change the money. “I want it to go into social care. I think that’s very, very important,” he said. “And actually by putting it into social care, we’re helping to ease the pressure on the NHS. Because what we have are people who are currently, unfortunately, locked up in hospital because there are no social care places available. So it’s very important that we bring it to social attention.”
It is unclear whether it would also increase money to keep the NHS budget at its current level when this happens.
Another area where Mrs Truss is seen as more radical than Sunak is building on Brexit.
His status as a Remainer – he voted to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum, unlike Mr Sunak – is seen as an Achilles’ heel by his political opponents.
But will this prove as politically unfavorable as some expect? He aims to secure trade deals and push the Northern Ireland Protocol bill through the Commons to support his “handover” argument, and he has some prominent Brexiteers on his side.
On Saturday, Mrs Truss will announce that all EU legislation transposed on the UK’s statute books will have a “sunset” clause at the end of 2023, meaning a decision will be made on whether to keep, amend or scrap around 2,400 laws for then . Sunak has made a similar promise.
Could the audit really be done in less than a year and a half? “I’m a big believer in deadlines, because that’s what motivates people to get things done,” he said. “It’s been six years since people voted to leave the European Union. We still have these laws in our bylaws and they’re holding us back.”