The former chancellor is backed by Robert Jenrick, the former housing secretary, and Oliver Dowden, who stepped down as party chairman last month – reuniting the trio whose declaration of support for Johnson boosted his candidacy for leadership in 2019. Mr Sunak’s National Insurance hike, opposition to income tax cuts before 2024 and a planned rise in corporation tax have, however, traction elsewhere. Jacob Rees-Mogg described him at a cabinet meeting as the “very lamentable socialist chancellor”. Separately, a minister close to a leadership rival claimed that, during his tenure at the Treasury, Mr Sunak looked more like a capable chief secretary – the number two role in the finance department – than a visionary chancellor. Mr Sunak, the minister said, was “captured” by civil servants who were instinctively opposed to the tax cuts. A source close to Mr Sunak said: “Rishi is the chancellor who successfully steered the economy through a pandemic, saving tens of millions of jobs and installing the furlough scheme in a matter of days.” Meanwhile, in an apparent dig at his former boss, Mr Clarke used his op-ed to reveal his frustration that the government “didn’t cut taxes fast enough to support working people”. Mr Sunak’s team is relieved that revelations that his wife, Aksatha Murthy, did not own the home and that she held a US green card during his tenure as chancellor came to light months before the contest, and not now. But they are braced for renewed scrutiny – as are aides to Mr Javid, who leaked details of his own former non-domestic status while headlines focused on Mr Sunak in April. Mr Javid announces his candidacy in an interview with this newspaper, pledging radical tax cuts. In his first campaign interview, however, he also had to defend himself against claims he wanted Christmas lockdown measures and compulsory Covid vaccines for companies with more than 100 employees, following reports against the former health minister following his resignation on Tuesday.
