Rishi Sunak engaged in more furious exchanges with Tory leadership rivals Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt as the contenders to succeed Boris Johnson as British prime minister faced off in a second televised debate.
The former UK finance minister accused Ms Truss of peddling “something-for-nothing” economics after she said he was choking off growth by raising taxes to their highest level in 70 years.
And after Ms Mordaunt said she would not keep to his rule of only borrowing to invest, he said even former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn did not advocate such a fiscal loosening.
After she was criticised for a poor performance in the first debate, Ms Truss immediately went on the offensive in the second encounter, staged by ITV, by attacking Mr Sunak’s record in the finance ministry.
“Rishi, you have raised taxes to the highest level in 70 years. That is not going to drive economic growth,” she said.
“You raised national insurance, even though people like me opposed it in Cabinet at the time because we could have afforded to fund the NHS through general taxation.
“The fact is that raising taxes at this moment will choke off economic growth; it will prevent us getting the revenue we need to pay off the debt.”
Mr Sunak said the pandemic damaged the economy and public finances had to be rebuilt.
“I’d love to stand here and say, ‘Look, I’ll cut this tax, that tax and another tax and it will all be OK.’ But you know what? It won’t,” he said.
“There’s a cost to these things and the cost of higher inflation, higher mortgage rates, eroded savings. And you know what? This something-for-nothing economics isn’t Conservative. It’s socialism.”
Ms Mordaunt said the limited tax cuts she advocated were not inflationary and people need help now with the cost of living.
“I don’t understand why Rishi doesn’t understand that,” she said.
Mr Sunak said: “It is one thing to borrow for long-term investment. It is a whole other thing to put the day-to-day bills on the country’s credit card. It is not just wrong, it is dangerous.
“Even Jeremy Corbyn didn’t go that far.”
