PRITI Patel last night made an eleventh hour appeal to win over Tory Brexiteers as she considers whether to run for leader.
The Home Secretary was locked in heated talks with her closest aides to decide if she should join the race to be next PM.
But in a blow, she came last in a leadership poll of Tory party members run by ConHome.
Ms Patel addressed the influential European Research Group of Brexiteers to try to win their backing.
She said Britain is in the grip of a 1970s-style economic meltdown and vowed to cut tax, ditch green levies and start fracking.
Taking a swipe at leadership rivals all jumping on the “fashionable” bandwagon of tax cutting, she promised her cuts would be felt in pockets by the next election.
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Holed up in a room in a corner of Parliament, Ms Patel said only she can be trusted to deliver on Brexit.
She told the cloak and dagger hustings that “quite frankly we are in one hell of a hole” of rocketing inflation and “no one in the party has gripped it”.
Many in the party “will remember what the 1970s was like” and the next PM must break with “Treasury orthodoxy”, deregulate and cut taxes.
She told the sweaty room of MPs: “When it comes to the fashionable line of cutting tax….we are all Conservatives and believe in cutting taxes.”
The one-time darling of the Tory right suggested she would cut income tax and change personal allowance rates.
She added: “Any reform around taxation, we will have to make sure it touches people by next election.”
Energy has been “an albatross round our neck” and the government has “failed on energy”, she said
The next PM must ditch green levies and “be bold” on what this means for trendy Net Zero pledges, she said.
On Brexit, she said the party must “have the courage of its convictions” and must not “cave in” to the EU.
Instead Britain must “slug this out” and push ahead with blowing up the NI protocol to save the peace process in Northern Ireland.
She said: “We need to stand firm in terms of negotiations and dialogue.”
She also said she was the only Cabinet minister arguing to ditch the NI protocol back in July.
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But insiders reckon Suella Braverman – a hardcore Brexiteer who is standing – has effectively wrecked Priti’s chances of getting the leadership.
Just 2 per cent of the 842 activists polled by ConHome said they wanted Priti to be PM.
