Boris Johnson has piled more pressure on Rishi Sunak over support for Ukraine and his handling of the economy.
The former prime minister said the government should pledge to send more tanks to help in the war effort against Russia.
His call came just weeks after Sunak told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the UK would send a number of Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv.
Johnson also added his voice to calls from Tory MPs for chancellor Jeremy Hunt to cut taxes in the upcoming Budget.
His comments, while being interviewed by Nadine Dorries on her new Talk TV show Friday Night With Nadine, are yet another shot across the prime minister’s bows by his predecessor.
Johnson has spent the past week in America, where he has made some less-than-helpful interventions on Ukraine, including criticising the government’s decision not to send UK fighter jets to the country.
On tanks, Downing Street was forced to slap Johnson down after he said: “What is the point of having Challenger tanks patrolling the beautiful villages of Wiltshire … when the Ukrainians could be using them now to bring this war to an end?”
In his interview with Dorries, the former PM acknowledged Sunak’s promise to send tanks to Ukraine, but added: “I tell you this, Nadine, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if we gave some more tanks ourselves.”
HuffPost UK revealed that another former PM, Liz Truss, will make her first public intervention since leaving office in a newspaper article on Sunday.
She is expected to renew her call for taxes to be cut to boost economic growth, despite Sunak and Hunt repeatedly saying that their priority is bringing down inflation and the UK’s debt.
In a separate warning to the PM, Johnson told Dorries that the Tories must cut taxes ahead of the next election.
He said: “The economy will start to improve, inflation will come down, people will reward the Conservative party, they will reward the government for being sensible, for cutting their taxes and for getting things done that they need done.”
He added: “Never forget when it comes to it, it’s going to be a very clear choice.
“Do you want the Conservatives who are going to manage the economy, not put taxes up any further – in fact, cut taxes?
“Of course the taxation situation has been very, very difficult because of Covid. The huge expense that we had to go to, £480 billion we had to spend on looking after people during Covid, it was massively expensive.
“It had a big fiscal impact but Labour, everything they say makes it perfectly obvious that the taxes would be even higher.”
