On Tuesday, UK home secretary Priti Patel announced that she will not join the race for the role of the UK prime minister. She thanked her colleagues for their encouragement and said she wants to focus on her current role.
“Like all Conservative MPs and party members, I will be listening to cases being put forward by the candidates standing for the leadership of the party and trust the contest will be conducted in a good spirit that brings our party together,” Patel said while announcing that she is not joining the race.
But before she gave up on her bid she appealed to the European Research Group (ERG) of Tory Brexiteers. Reports from the UK news agencies indicate that she ran out of support.
A report by news agency The Guardian said that the education minister Andrea Jenkyns and the justice minister Tom Pursglove were among thirteen MPs who extended their support to Patel. However, time was not on her side as fellow rightwingers Suella Braverman, the attorney general, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary and Kemi Badenoch, the former equalities minister already announced their bids while shoring up support.
A pro-Brexit Tory MP told news agency The Telegraph that Patel’s indecisiveness until Monday hurt the chances of fellow Brexiteer Suella Braverman.
There were talks Patel would endorse Braverman but there was no such announcement from Patel or her office.
Tax Wars
Before Patel announced that she is withdrawing from the UK PM race she said that no one in the Tories has grasped the fact that the UK was headed towards a 1970s like economic crisis.
The Telegraph reported that the ERG gave a warm reception to Patel and expressed their support on several issues raised by the home secretary.
Patel also used the moment to take a dig at other candidates over tax cuts. “We must make sure tax cuts have touched the pockets of people by the next election. When it comes to the fashionable line of cutting tax, we are all conservatives and believe in cutting taxes,” she was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.
An ally of Priti Patel told the Telegraph that she too shared the ‘dirty dossier’ making rounds on Tory WhatsApp group which chides Rishi Sunak calling him a ‘schoolboy’ and calls him a ‘liar’ when it comes to taxes.
It also accuses Sunak of “wasting” money during the pandemic, breaking Conservative manifesto commitments to not raise taxes and said he publicly lied about his wife’s non-dom tax status.
The ERG mentioned above also gave Rishi Sunak a hard time when he addressed them. The ERG convened at Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader’s Commons office, where they tried to corner Rishi Sunak over other issues other than Brexit.
People familiar with the developments said Sunak got ‘huffy’ and left. “I thought this was about Brexit,” Sunak said before leaving.
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