By selecting Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss as the final two candidates for the Conservative leadership, MPs have given the party a clear choice between two distinct political visions and competing economic strategies. They have also ensured that the contest will be a grudge match between those who mourn the exit of Boris Johnson and the people they blame for toppling him.
Sunak’s lead over Truss among MPs in their last round of voting was clear but with just 38 per cent backing him, it is not sufficient to claim a sweeping mandate from the parliamentary party. Johnson won 51 per cent of MPs’ votes in 2019 and Theresa May won 60 per cent in 2016.
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Recent polls of party members put Truss ahead, although Sunak’s supporters point out that such polling is volatile and that he was ahead last year. Sunak has seen his support among the membership increase over the past two weeks and his team are confident that he will be outperform Truss in televised debates and hustings for party members around the country.
Neither candidate is a natural political athlete but Truss is the more wooden of the two and she has avoided broadcast interviews over the past fortnight partly because she is so slow on her feet. Sunak is more comfortable with detail, particularly on the economy and his team are confident that he will benefit from next Monday’s BBC TV debate.
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Truss remains the bookies’ favourite, however and she has some advantages, including the noisy backing of the Daily Mail as the Johnson continuity candidate. Johnson and his bitter circle in Downing Street have identified Sunak as his assassin and they will do everything in their power to stop him.
MPs report that party activists view Sunak as a remote figure on account of his great personal wealth and they blame him for a succession of tax rises. Truss has promised to reverse the most unpopular tax increases and to borrow tens of billions of pounds to fund the tax cuts she says will drive economic growth.
Sunak is presenting himself as the heir to Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson in arguing that inflation must come down before any tax cuts can be considered and that sound public finances are a cornerstone of the Conservatives’ electoral appeal.
Whichever of the candidates wins the leadership will face numerous political and economic challenges as well as a parliamentary party that has driven out three leaders in six years. David Cameron’s failure to manage the party led to the Brexit referendum and May lost control of her MPs when she lost her majority in the 2017 general election.
Johnson purged his internal critics and won an 80-seat majority but he too was unable to impose his will on his MPs. After Sunak and Truss pour everything into their struggle for the leadership over the next few weeks, the party one of them inherits may simply have become ungovernable.