THE FIVE candidates vying to become the next Prime Minister have all categorically ruled out a general election if they win. 

In a heated televised debate, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat clashed on taxes, on tackling inflation and on Boris Johnson’s record in government. 

 Ms Truss - who was widely seen as the weakest candidate in the first TV debate - went on the attack, accusing Mr Sunak of choking off economic growth. 

“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.”

Mr Sunak also criticised Ms Mordaunt for suggesting the government could borrow more to help with the cost of living crisis.

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.”

One of the most telling moments of the debate came when host Julie Etchingham asked the hopefuls to raise their hands if they would give their predecessor a job in cabinet.

All kept their hands down. 

Mr Tugendhat said his rivals had “lent credibility to the chaos” by serving in Mr Johnson's government. This, he added, would make it difficult for the Tories to win the next general election.

He said: “Whatever your responsibility was in that government, whatever your place in that government was, Keir Starmer in two years’ time is going to hold that record against us.

“We need to make sure we’re winning Conservative seats across the country, and even really good people lend credibility to the chaos candidate.”

Ms Badenoch said she was “not ashamed of anything we did” while she was a minister in Mr Johnson’s Government.

“We have a lot to be proud of. We got Brexit done, and what the Prime Minister did on Ukraine and on vaccines was fantastic,” she said.

“Serving in Government is not easy. It requires taking difficult decisions. Tom has never done that. It’s very easy for him to criticise what we’ve been doing, but we have been out there on the frontline making the case,” Ms Badenoch added.

Mr Tugendhat disagreed, stating he had been on the frontline in Afghanistan, Iraq and “in the argument against Putin and China.”

She responded: “You haven’t taken any decisions, talking is easy.”

Asked if they would agree to a general election, all five said no. 

Ms Mordaunt said: “No, we all stood on the same manifesto, we all have to come together and it’s a shared manifesto and a shared vision.”

Mr Tugendhat said: “No, we have a manifesto to deliver and I intend to deliver it. By showing leadership and commitment we can bring the party together, bring the country together, end this disunity and actually have a clean start.”

Ms Badenoch said: “We need to give people some stability, they are tired of all the upheaval.”

Ms Truss said: “No to a general election, we need 100 per cent of all of our effort on delivering for the people of Britain, I’m the person who can do that.”

Mr Sunak said: “We face an enormous economic challenge and we now need someone who has got the grip and the experience to deal with that, and that should be the priority going forward for the next leader.”

The attacks during the hour-long debate occasionally veered into the personal.

Mr Sunak pointed out that Ms Truss had been both a “Lib Dem and a Remainer” and asked her which one of those she regretted the most.

The foreign secretary responded by describing her left-wing upbringing in Paisley and Yorkshire, telling the ex-Chancellor that she “did not get the opportunities at your school”.

Mr Sunak's went to the £30k a year Winchester College.

On Monday, Tory MPs will vote to whittle the field down further. By Thursday, there should be just two candidates left with the party’s 200,000 members decided who the next Prime Minister should be.