Jeremy Hunt has taken a swipe at Boris Johnson as the Tory leadership race heats up.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme on Monday morning, the foreign secretary was grilled on his own leadership campaign to succeed Theresa May.
“There is one very big difference between me and Boris, which is that I am foreign secretary and I have a very big job to do to try and get this [Brexit] deal over the line and that has to be my focus,” he said.
Hunt is expected to throw his hat into a crowded field when the contest to replace the prime minister formally begins.
The foreign secretary campaigned for Remain but has since shifted to a much more pro-Brexit stance in what has been seen as an attempt to woo the eurosceptic Tory grassroots.
Asked if the next leader had to be Brexiteer, he said: “I think what matters is that we have a cabinet that believes in Brexit, and we believe in Brexit whichever way we voted in the referendum because we’re all democrats.”
It comes as The Times reported some leadership candidates in the cabinet want May to stay in office until the autumn and get her Brexit deal through parliament before standing down.
However Ian Duncan Smith, the former party leader, said on Sunday the PM should quit next month before the UK has to hold European elections.
Many Tory MPs are furious that the elections may have to take place at all, amid warnings that the party is likely to suffer heavy losses if they go ahead.
Hunt acknowledged that the party could be heading for a “disastrous” showing at the polls if the country was required to vote.
“In terms of polling it certainly looks that way,” he told Today. “That is why we don’t want to be in those polls from a political point of view, but actually the bigger principle for people in Britain is that we voted to leave the EU and they want the politicians to get on with it.”
Johnson this morning used his column in The Daily Telegraph to argue once the UK had left the EU there would be an “outbreak of unity, and violent agreement” within the Tory party.
“There is a pent-up tide of Tory ideas and energy that for the past three years have been kept out by the Brexit monomania,” he said.
Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, stoked talk that he will launch a leadership bid when he said on Twitter it was “never the favourite” who won popularity contests.
Philip Hammond, who is not expected to join the race to become prime minister, has mocked prominent Tory Brexiteers for engaging in a “suicide pact” during failed bids to beat May in the last contest.
The chancellor used a speech in the US on Friday to say Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Johnson had formed an “unintended suicide pact” in the
Hammond added said that Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom had effectively “knifed herself” during the race to become PM.