The blunder drew criticism from top Tories, including Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, who said it was “one of the strangest – and stupidest – things I’ve ever heard from a politician”. Jake Berry, chairman of Conservative MPs’ Northern Research group, accused Mr Sunak of “boasting[ing] about trying to channel vital investment away from deprived areas’. “He says one thing and does another – from raising taxes to trying to block funding for our Armed Forces and now leveling up,” he said. Mr Sunak told the Telegraph that the upheaval was “very, very simple to clear up” and that there was “no problem” if the public looked into his record in government. “This was about the way the government identifies deprived areas and then allocates funding according to need and the way they did it until recently was very outdated and didn’t reflect the real need in areas,” he said. .
