Transport Secretary Grant Shapps launches his bid to be the leader of the Conservative Party today in The Mail on Sunday with a simple pitch – ‘I can win you the election.’
His confidence stems from his experience as party chairman in 2015 – ‘I helped David Cameron win’, he says – his ‘grit’ as a campaigner and his love of spreadsheets.
He promises an agenda of being ‘instinctively’ in favour of lowering taxes and cutting red tape, adding: ‘The level of taxes is totally unsustainable. We need to leave money in people’s pockets.’ However, he is short on the details of how to achieve it.
The Cabinet Minister criticises the way so many taxpayers have been dragged into paying higher rates as tax thresholds have not moved in line with inflation. ‘People aren’t stupid,’ Mr Shapps says.
Last week, he used his number-crunching skills to urge Boris Johnson to quit while the Prime Minister was in his Downing Street bunker vowing to stay, telling him he would…
