Rishi Sunak has raced to make up lost ground with a plan for future tax cuts. (Dossier)
London:
British Conservative front-runner Liz Truss won another heavyweight endorsement on Monday as Tory members began a month of voting to decide the next occupant of Number 10 Downing Street.
Truss’ rival Rishi Sunak raced to make up lost ground with a plan for future tax cuts and potentially funding for a future Women’s World Cup in Britain after the Lionesses England won the European Championship.
Truss attended Sunday’s final against Germany, and the first win by any England football team in a major tournament since 1966 scrapped Mr Trump’s long-term tax plan. Sunak of every cover except The Daily Telegraph.
The Tory contenders were due to face off later on Monday in a members’ call in the south-west city of Exeter, the second of 12 such events before a winner is announced on September 5.
Sunak, a controversial politician, must regain momentum after Truss stormed to a strong poll lead on a platform of immediate tax cuts to tackle Britain’s worst cost-of-living crisis in generations.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi joined other luminaries in Boris Johnson’s cabinet in backing the foreign secretary against Sunak, his predecessor at the Treasury.
“Liz understands that the status quo is not an option in times of crisis,” Zahawi wrote in the Telegraph, attacking Sunak’s plan to prioritize fighting inflation now, before cutting taxes later.
“We need a ‘booster’ attitude to the economy, not a ‘buster’ one, to address cost of living issues and challenges on the world stage,” the new chancellor said.
Mr Sunak’s resignation from Johnson’s scandal-tainted cabinet helped spark a ministerial exodus that forced the prime minister out last month.
As they began receiving postal and online ballot forms, pollsters say a large portion of the roughly 200,000 conservative members harbor a grievance against Sunak, one Johnson shares.
The Prime Minister is not formally taking sides, but has told aides that he intends to offer some advice to his successor, “whoever he is,” the Sunday Times reported.
“Unpleasant, even dangerous”
Despite endorsements from the likes of Zahawi, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis and centrist Tory Tom Tugendhat, Truss has warned against complacency.
Heading into the Exeter quest, the foreign secretary has made a marked improvement in her sometimes robotic public delivery, which was most notably seen in a 2014 speech when she was environment secretary.
Returning to his old camp, the Remainer-turned-Brexit fanatic promised over the weekend to “free” farmers from European Union regulations to improve UK food safety.
Truss also promised to tackle labor shortages in agriculture, partly caused by post-Brexit immigration restrictions, which have forced UK farmers to leave rotten fruit in their fields and cull healthy pigs .
And Truss unveiled a plan on education, promising that all students from top-rated schools would automatically receive an invitation to apply to Oxford, Cambridge or other prestigious universities.
Both Truss and Sunak went to Oxford, in her case after attending a public school in the northern city of Leeds, which she says failed too many students by not pushing them to excel.
Both contenders have stressed the need for unity once the election is out of the way, aware that the opposition Labor party is surging in the polls amid Johnson’s economic crisis and political turmoil.
But his supporters have not been deterred, especially Truss’s combative ally Nadine Dorries.
The culture secretary retweeted an image depicting Johnson as Julius Caesar, being stabbed in the back by Mr Sunak.
Last year, Tory MP David Amess was stabbed by an ISIS supporter.
In light of this, Dorries’ retweet was “disgusting and even dangerous”, Sunak supporter Greg Hands told Sky News.
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