Rishi Sunak is vowing to fast-track the ripping up of EU rules on data, clinical trials and financial services, to underline his Brexit credentials in the Tory leadership race.
The former chancellor would decide within 100 days which of a mountain of 2,400 outstanding laws and regulations should disappear – also promising a “Big Bang 2.0” for the City of London.
The move comes as new polling suggests Mr Sunak is the overwhelming choice of voters in the constituencies the Conservatives must retain in order to win the next general election.
The public prefers him in 76 per cent of the 365 seats the party won in 2019, the survey suggests – leaving rivals Tom Tugendhat (19 per cent) and Penny Mordaunt (5 per cent) trailing badly.
Liz Truss – who is floundering in the race after being judged to have lost the first TV debate – and Kemi Badenoch both failed to top the table in any of the seats, J.L. Partners found.
Mr Sunak drew a sharp contrast with Remain-backer Ms Truss, by pointing out he broke with the Tory leadership to campaign for Leave despite being warned “my political career would end”.
“As prime minister, I would go further and faster in using the freedoms Brexit has given us to cut the mass of EU regulations and bureaucracy holding back our growth,” he said.
The policy is unveiled after Mr Sunak scored a success with endorsement by the figure seen as the party’s ‘Mr North’, the influential Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen.
However, the assault on EU laws will trigger a fresh clash with Brussels if it leads to lower regulatory standards, flouting pledges made when the Brexit trade deal was signed.
Last month, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, Maros Sefcovic, warned of “consequences” if the promised level playing field is tilted, saying: “We will therefore be watching developments closely.”
In other developments in the race, ahead of a second TV clash on Sunday evening:
* Ms Mordaunt, the favourite of Tory members according to a separate poll, came under fire for her support of homeopathy on the NHS from critics of alternative medicine.
* Ms Truss floated another big tax cut, to help people take work breaks for childcare or as carers, despite Mr Sunak’s criticism that her economic plans are “a fairytale”.
* Mr Tugendhat – the contender most likely to fall in Monday’s third ballot – insisted he will not drop out before then, saying: “I have never turned down a challenge because the odds were against me. I don’t plan to start now.”
* Labour demanded that the candidates come clean on the spending cuts required to deliver the promised “billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts”.
* The Liberal Democrats urged them to rule out a cabinet role for Boris Johnson to ensure they can begin “mending our broken politics”.
Mr Sunak remains the favourite candidate of Conservative MPs, ahead of further ballots from Monday to whittle down the five survivors to a final two by Wednesday.
But the winner – and the next prime minister – will then be chosen by the 180,000-odd Tory members before Mr Johnson leaves Downing Street on 6 September.
The outgoing government is already planning a bonfire of EU “retained law” using, controversially, backstage regulations instead of allowing full scrutiny and votes.
The former chancellor said he would accelerate the process, pointing to “burdensome” financial services regulations and promising to “make London once again the world’s leading financial centre by 2027”.
Mr Sunak would also “remove the burdens” of EU data laws that he argued are “stopping British tech companies from innovating, and public services from being able to share data to clamp down on crime”.
Third, he would “speed up our clinical trials approval process”, by creating a single approval service, pointing to the success of the Covid vaccine rollout.
Mr Sunak said: “In 2016, I was told by my party leadership that if I backed Brexit, my political career would end before it had even begun. I backed Brexit regardless because I knew it was the right thing for the country.
“We need to capitalise on these opportunities by ditching the mass of unnecessary regulations and low-growth mentality we’ve inherited from the EU.”
