LAST UPDATE | 3 Aug 2022

LIZ TRUSS’S BID for the Tory leadership was boosted by two surveys giving her massive leads and the backing of former rival Sajid Javid as he attacked Rishi Sunak’s more cautious plans for tax cuts.

The British Foreign Secretary won a 34-percentage point lead over Mr Sunak in a YouGov poll of party members, before a survey for the ConservativeHome website put her 32 ahead.

Javid, whose resignation as health secretary minutes before Sunak’s as chancellor triggered the cascade that forced Boris Johnson to quit as Tory leader, then threw his support behind the frontrunner.

The failed leadership candidate warned that “tax cuts now are essential” as Mr Sunak resists adopting Ms Truss’s more radical plan in order to get to grips with spiralling inflation first.

A former chancellor, Mr Javid also warned in an article for the Times that the nation risks “sleepwalking into a big-state, high-tax, low-growth, social democratic model which risks us becoming a middle-income economy by the 2030s”.

“If we can renew our government with a bold agenda, the Conservatives can still beat Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP at the next election – and the evidence suggests Liz is the best-placed candidate to do so,” he added.

Mr Javid launched a leadership run on a platform of swift tax cuts but quickly pulled out, struggling to win enough nominations from Tory MPs to go through to the first round of voting.

His backing of Ms Truss came shortly before the latest hustings of Tory members at an event in Cardiff on this evening.

The YouGov survey showed 60% of the party members polled between July 29 and August 2 saying they intend to vote for the Foreign Secretary, with 26% backing Mr Sunak.

The poll of 1,043 Conservative Party members indicates just 11% do not know who they will vote for, while 2% said they will not take part in the contest.

A further indication of her dominance came with a survey of 1,003 members by the ConservativeHome website, which had 58% backing Ms Truss to Mr Sunak’s 26%.

But Ms Truss insisted she is taking nothing for granted, as a delay in ballot papers being issued due to cyber security concerns gave her rival a little more time to catch up.

She acknowledged there is “still a long way to go” in the contest as she continues to face questions about abandoning a key policy pledge.