Tory MP’s need to concentrate on communicating the Government’s successes rather than plotting to replace Rishi Sunak as party leader, Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has said.
Asked if Rishi Sunak could be replaced in the coming week, he told GB News: “I really don’t think that that is going to happen.
“And the reason is that I think my colleagues in Parliament know that what we’ve got to focus on now are the great successes that we’ve had and we’ve got to continue to communicate.
“So, for example, the reduction in the level of inflation down from 11.1 to 3.2%. That’s taking a lot of those cost pressures off from people, real wages have been rising now for nine consecutive months, we’ve seen since September of last year, 200,000 fewer people on those NHS backlogs.
“We made this commitment to spend more on defence, we’re cutting people’s taxes. Right now, £900 per year less in tax due to the National Insurance that we’ve been reducing.
“So those are the things that we’ve got to communicate and I think most, the vast majority of my colleagues in Parliament know that.”
Speaking to Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he was asked if a confrontation brewing with Ireland over migrants: “What we know is that we’ve now passed the Rwanda bill and we’re already seeing some of the effects of that happening in the sense that some people are now thinking, ‘well, I’m going to potentially be sent to Rwanda’ and therefore the UK is a less attractive place to be in.
“And that’s the very purpose of the bill now as to what’s happening in Ireland. We’re not in a position where we’re able, for example, to return people to France who come here illegally.
“This kind of plays into the discussions and the position that we’re in when it comes to people that are going across the Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland border. We will be working very closely with Irish counterparts.
“I know that the Home Secretary is soon to have a meeting with his Irish counterpart to look at these things, but we certainly don’t have any plans to be in there standing in the way of people leaving the UK.
“The whole purpose of the policy, in fact, is to act as a deterrent and I think what you’re seeing here is the early signs of that deterrent working.”
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