“Their message was: you may not love my finances, but it’s successful, so stick with me and we’ll be fine. And for people who didn’t agree with that, the second part of the strategy was: I’m a winner, I’m the one who can win the next election. “Instead, they should have sold the fact that he’s promised tax cuts before the next election, that he’s the one who spent £37bn on handouts to help with energy bills and that there’s more to come.” Outsiders are also puzzled by Mr Sunak’s decision earlier this week to promise to scrap VAT on energy bills for a year if he becomes prime minister – a measure he had opposed when it was proposed by Mr .Johnson earlier this year. “If you ask anyone who has run a successful political campaign, they will tell you that you never deviate from the core message,” the general said. “Dominic Cummings knows that, Alistair Campbell knows that. You start your pew and stay at it. “The attack on Liz with the numbers could have gone overboard. They should have come out every day saying her numbers don’t add up, they should have sharpened that message, hammered it relentlessly and made people doubt her credibility. “But they have lost their nerve in a big way saying they might cut VAT. This is a campaign with problems. It’s out of their hands because they can no longer criticize Liz for her fabulous finances.” At the start of the leadership campaign, members of Mr Sunak’s team told The Telegraph they wanted to build an inevitability to his eventual victory. And that failed. “There is an arrogance and an assumption that it will slip,” said a Whitehall source. “Members choose it. The fact that the campaign website went up in December, the fact that he put his signature on things, it upset a lot of people.”