Liz Truss is “another Theresa May”, Edwina Currie has told Dan Wootton on GB News.
Ms Truss and Rishi Sunak were confirmed as the final two candidates to become the next Conservative Party leader after the final round of voting within Tory MPs earlier today.
Penny Mordaunt was knocked out of the race earlier today after gaining the fewest votes of the three candidates.
Ms Truss has pledged to “start cutting taxes from day one” with a new Budget and Spending Review that would reverse April’s rise in national insurance and next year’s corporation tax hike from 19 percent to 25 percent.
Dan Wootton and Edwina Currie
GB News
She has also vowed to “simplify” taxes and ensure people are not penalised for caring for children or relatives.
She has not explained how she would pay for the £30 billion in tax cuts she has promised, but insists they “can be paid for within the existing fiscal envelope”.
But Ms Currie believes that “making big changes, like Ms Truss has said, worries me”.
Speaking on GB News’ Dan Wootton Tonight, Ms Currie said: “You don’t need a lot of A Level economics to know If you put a lot of money into people’s pockets in the middle of an inflationary crisis, all you do is add more fuel to that fire.
“You just end up with more inflation.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak
PA
“If you cut tax with the purpose of helping people over this inflationary crisis, what that means is you’re going to put more money in people’s pockets just at the time when actually we need people to make choices that will reduce the damage at what inflation can do.
“So that this time next year, prices are actually starting to come down.
“That will not happen if you make big, big changes, as Liz Truss has said, in order to put more money in people’s pockets, that worries me.
“The other thing that worries me about Liz Truss is she is very wooden and I think she’s another Theresa May and in practice I think she could be sat on.”
Rishi Sunak has pitched himself as the fiscally conservative candidate and criticised his rivals’ plans to raise borrowing to pay for tax cuts as “comforting fairy tales”.
He has promised to “deliver tax cuts that drive growth”, but to do so in a “way that’s responsible” and only “after we’ve got a grip of inflation”.