Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss Named Finalists for U.K. Leader
The Washington Post reports Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss Named Finalists for U.K. Leader
The next prime minister of Britain and leader of the Conservative Party is now guaranteed to be an ethnic minority or a woman, after Tory lawmakers on Wednesday selected two finalists — former finance minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss — with a winner to be announced in September.
The matchup between Sunak and Truss offer Tory voters a choice between a man who says he is the only adult in the race and a woman who says she is the only one who has shown true leadership.
Truss supports a bunch of tax cuts.
Sunak says Britain must first get inflation under control. He has suggested that tax cuts are a kind of “fantasy island” economics, and that Truss and her side have no idea how they will pay for the borrowing needed to keep the British government afloat after two years of pandemic subsidies.
Sunak is a former Goldman Sachs heavy, a former hedge fund manager. He married really rich. His wife, whom he met at Stanford, is the daughter of N.R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire who founded Infosys.
About Liz Truss
- Supports Ukraine
- Supports Tax Cuts
- Truss wants to increase military spending from 2% to 3% of gross domestic product
- Opposed Brexit but now says it was a mistake
About Rishi Sunak
- Calls tax cuts are a kind of “fantasy island” economics.
- The ex-chancellor loves small states and sound money.
- Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty made the Sunday Times Rich List of the Britain’s wealthiest 250 people, with a joint fortune estimated to be £730 million, or about $875 million.
Is a Brexit-backing Thatcherite Too Left-Wing for the UK Conservatives?
Politico asks Is a Brexit-backing Thatcherite Too Left-Wing for the UK Conservatives?
He’s the millionaire ex-chancellor who loves small states and sound money; the Brexit-voting former hedge fund boss who attended one of England’s most exclusive fee-paying schools.
Yet in the frenzied race to replace Boris Johnson as U.K. prime minister, it’s Rishi Sunak who now finds himself painted as the high tax, pro-EU candidate of the Tory left.
It’s been quite a ride for a man described only four months ago as a “Thatcherite in trainers” by the left-leaning Guardian newspaper.
“Rishi blasted on ‘socialist’ taxes,” the front page of the right-wing Daily Mail screamed last week, promoting an op-ed article from Johnson’s loyal lieutenant Jacob Rees-Mogg. “Sunak has squandered the Conservative Party’s decade-long efforts to build a competitive tax regime,” Rees-Mogg warned.
“Liz Truss: I’ll spike Sunak’s tax hike,” its sister paper the Mail on Sunday had splashed the previous weekend, celebrating the foreign secretary’s “true blue” campaign. Two days later, the Mail front page said ominously: “Truss — Back me or it’ll be Rishi.” It sounded like a warning to readers.
This glaring disparity between the views of Tory MPs and the party’s grassroots members is in part a reflection of a successful effort by enemies to undermine his record after two and a half years as Johnson’s chancellor.
Improbably, Sunak also finds himself vulnerable to right-wing attacks on Brexit, despite having voted Leave in 2016. Some Brexiteers fear he would blink at the prospect of a damaging trade war with the EU, should relations deteriorate further in the months ahead.
Indeed it is Remain-voting Truss, now reinvented as the darling of the Tory right, who is seen as the tax-cutting, Brexit true-believer.
The Process
Only the Tory MPs and party members have a say. Any Tory MP can throw his or her name into the hat. The MPs weed out candidates one by one until there are just two left. At that point, all the party members votes. 120 votes ensures a runoff spot.
The Final Four
- Sunak 115
- Penny Mordaunt 82
- Liz Truss 71 backers
- Kemi Badenoch, a former equalities minister, 58 votes
The Final Three
- Sunak 118
- Penny Mordaunt 92
- Liz Truss 86 backers
Mordaunt was ousted when Badenoch backers opted for Truss instead.
What About Brexit?
Somehow Truss, who voted against Brexit, wants us to believe she is the Brexit torch bearer.
The UK will not go back in the EU but either of them could end up supporting a custom’s union.
It was Sunak’s dramatic resignation as Chancellor that precipitated the collapse of Johnson’s government.
I don’t trust Truss on Brexit, and I oppose more military spending. Without knowing more about Sunak, that’s who I hope wins.
This post originated at MishTalk.Com.
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