The former chancellor sparked outrage when he made the admission while speaking to Conservative party members in the affluent city of Kent on Friday. “I was able to start changing the types of funding to make sure that areas like this get the funding they deserve,” Sunak said in videotaped comments. “We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labor that pushed all the funding into deprived urban areas that needed to be undone. I set out to undo it.” Tunbridge Wells has a Tory majority of 14,645 and has been held by the Conservatives since 1974 when the constituency was formed. Mitchell, who is a supporter of Sunack’s Tory leadership bid, claimed it was a misunderstanding and that Sunack was actually talking about the red wall. “I think it’s misunderstood because, first of all, Rishi, when he was in government, generated significant amounts as Chancellor of the Exchequer to help level the agenda and address funding needs especially in red wall seats in our poorer areas , but also in areas like mine, which are not part of the red wall and are not among the poorest areas in the country,” the Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield told Times Radio on Saturday. “Indeed, Sutton Coldfield is one of the wealthiest.” While Mitchell admitted the needs are “much greater elsewhere”, he said taxpayers’ support would be needed to revitalize high streets and town centres. “Now, I’m not saying for a moment that the needs aren’t much greater elsewhere, but we’re not going to be able to revitalize the high street infrastructure, the downtown infrastructure, which has suffered so much from the economic change over the last few years. 10 years,” he said. “We won’t be able to do this without some, admittedly smaller, but some government taxpayer support and what Rishi was saying, I think, was that he had adjusted the rules to ensure that both the red wall and the poorer places could get the help they need, but also where needed on a wider front, which of course affects the red wall seats, such funding can be made available.’ But some of his colleagues were less sympathetic to Mr Sunak as he tries to take on his leadership rival, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST Zak Goldsmith, the foreign secretary, said his comments were “one of the strangest – and stupidest – things I’ve ever heard from a politician”, while Jake Berry, the chairman of Tory MPs’ Northern Inquiry Group, said that in The Public Sunak “claims to want to raise the standard of the north, but here he is boasting that he is trying to channel vital investment away from deprived areas”. The Truss supporter added: “He says one thing and does another – from raising taxes to trying to block funding for our armed forces and now raising the bar.” Lisa Nandey, Labour’s shadow secretary, said his admission was “outrageous”. “This is public money. It should be distributed fairly and spent where it is needed – not used as a bribe to Tory members,” added Nandy, who has written to communities secretary Greg Clarke, MP for Tunbridge Wells, calling for him to investigate. But at Tory leadership in Eastbourne on Friday night, Mr Sunack stood by his comments to Tunbridge Wells. “I want to level up everywhere. And as you may have seen from a video clip that’s online, I don’t think it’s just about our very large urban cities, I think it’s about investing in growth in small towns, in rural communities, in coastal communities like these here in the Southeast.” , he said to applause.
