The former UK chancellor’s comments, made in a sunny garden, appeared to bear with the government’s rhetoric about “flattening” Britain and spreading wealth beyond the south-east. Sunak said he changed Treasury funding formulas to ensure areas like Tunbridge Wells got “the funding they deserve”, in a video clip obtained by the New Statesman magazine that quickly went viral. He said: “We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labor which drove all the funding into deprived urban areas. . . which had to be undone. I set out to undo it.” While Sunak’s message may have gone down well with some of the Tories voting for the next party leader and UK prime minister this summer, it did not travel far beyond the genteel town of Tunbridge Wells. Jake Berry, chairman of Tory MPs’ Northern Research Group and a supporter of Sunak’s rival, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, said that in public Sunak “claims he wants to bring the north up, but here he is bragging that he is trying to funnel vital investment away . from deprived areas”. Labor said it was “scandalous” that Sunak “openly bragged about setting the rules for funneling taxpayers’ money into rich Tory boroughs”. Deputy Labor leader Angela Rayner joked: “And then Rishi Sunak wonders why he has no working-class friends.” Sunak last year denied he was involved in “pork barrel politics” after the Financial Times revealed that 40 of the 45 cities receiving £1bn through new “city deals” had Tory MPs. Sunak said on Friday that in Tunbridge Wells he had “pointed out that deprivation exists across our country and it needs to be addressed and so we need to make sure our funding formulas recognize that”. “People who need help and extra investment are not just limited to large urban areas. You find them in cities across the UK and in rural areas too,” he added. An ally of Truss said: “I almost feel sorry for him. He’s running a terrible campaign and he’s come up with a bunch of policies that he clearly doesn’t believe in because he’s so desperate.” With ballot papers landing on Friday, some veteran Tory spokesmen believe the race is already over, with Sunak badly trailing Truss in the party’s membership polls.

Although Sunak has targeted unions across the south-east of England, where the majority of party members are based, two veteran campaigners said those areas had also turned against him. “Rishi was hoping to win the country counties but he doesn’t seem to realize that Liz’s tax cut policies are popular with us,” said one campaigner. A former cabinet minister who supports Truss said: “As far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t have ended any longer for Rishi. He has committed the grave sin of making the Tories feel like they are screwing up the poor.”