Make no mistake, however, this is not a hit job by Ashcroft. At least not on Sunak, anyway. Pitching him as an inherently low-tax Tory compromised by Johnson’s “desire to throw money” at any situation, the former party deputy chairman denies claims of a “plot” to oust Boris, insisting the former prime minister became “paranoid” about Sunak’s rising-star status.
One source reveals saying to Johnson after furlough had been completed by Sunak, “It’s nice to have a hungry young lion sitting round the Cabinet table,” to which “Big Dog” allegedly replied, “I don’t want hungry young lions round the Cabinet table, I want tired old lions.” He apparently “hated” the competition.
Carrie Johnson, the subject of a 2022 biography by Ashcroft she has since described as “regurgitated lies”, is blamed for “stoking tensions” by “associating Rishi with Dominic Cummings, who’d orchestrated (Sajid) Javid’s downfall”. Sunak, we are reminded, supported Cummings after he tested out his eyesight on the A1 during Covid, tweeting: “Taking care of your wife and young child is justifiable and reasonable, trying to score political points over it isn’t.”
Despite both being on the same hawkish page when it came to lifting lockdown, “the more Boris’s relationship with Dom worsened, the more paranoid Boris became about Rishi”. Johnson’s decision to raise national insurance contributions to pay for social care also drove a wedge, not least when Sunak copped flak for breaking the 2019 manifesto pledge. “Boris found it frustrating that there was someone who’d ask, ‘What’s the cost; what are we cutting; or if you don’t want to cut we must raise a tax – but by the way that’s not a Conservative thing to do.’”
Environmentally conscious but not “hair-shirt green”, Sunak was also “frustrated by Johnson’s environmental fixation, largely because he felt that he was never honest with the public about its true cost.” When he finally resigned as Chancellor following a “Tory death spiral” involving Owen Paterson, Partygate and Peppa Pig, and having faced negative headlines over his wife’s non-dom status and his own US green card, Johnson was so furious he threatened to send Sunak a video calling him a “c—”.
According to Tory backbencher Philip Davies: “When people say he was always scheming to get rid of Boris, I know that’s nonsense,” pointing out that he’d “taken one for the team” by being labelled “high tax” in order to pay Johnson’s credit-card bill. Yet Boris backers may question why “readyforrishi.com” was first registered with the American domain name registrar GoDaddy in December 2021, a whole seven months before Johnson’s resignation.
Despite barely speaking to Truss throughout the entire leadership race and beyond, “considerate” Sunak apparently commiserated with his successor Kwasi Kwarteng following the mini-budget implosion of September 2022. “On the day I was sacked, Rishi called me,” remembers Kwarteng. “I thought that was a really nice touch.” Yet such was the “good guy’s” political naivety that he had to be told by Davies to prepare for Truss’s imminent demise. He also “hadn’t even considered” that he’d “have to keep Jeremy [Hunt] as chancellor” so as not to further spook the markets.
