Querying Truss’s policy positions
SUNAK SUPPORTING PAPER CHALLENGES FOREIGN SECRETARY’S RECORD
THE Tory leadership contest will probably be a lot tighter than people think.
Conservative party members who vote initially for Liz Truss may change their allegiances after hearing Rishi Sunak – as they are entitled to do under the rules.
The balance of informed opinion certainly appears to be against the foreign secretary. The papers which support her argue that she challenges “orthodoxy”, especially at the Treasury. This is another way of saying she is right because she is wrong.
The Times, which has endorsed Rishi for prime minister in a leading article, used another to take Truss apart with surgical precision.
In “Question of Truss”, it said “the public has a right to know why she has changed her mind so often on many important issues”.
“Liz Truss is presenting herself as the ‘change’ candidate in the Conservative party leadership election,” the paper said. “That shows some chutzpah given that the foreign secretary is the longest continuous serving member of the cabinet, having been first appointed in 2014. Nor does her record mark her out as a reformer. To the extent that she has intruded on public consciousness, it has often been as a figure of fun.
“Yet Ms Truss’s longevity is proof that in one respect she is indeed the change candidate. Her ability to navigate the transitions from David Cameron to Theresa May to Boris Johnson is testimony to her flexibility and pragmatism. This mutability was also evident in her transformation from Liberal Democrat activist to Conservative MP, and from Remain campaigner in the 2016 referendum to standard bearer of the right-wing Brexiteers today. Indeed, Ms Truss now insists she was ‘wrong’ to have ever backed Remain.
“Of course, everyone is entitled to change their minds... Nonetheless, a candidate whose positions have shifted so dramatically has a particular obligation to explain their reasons. When Ms Truss says that the economic orthodoxy of the past 20 years has failed and she now supports unfunded tax cuts, it would be useful to know how she arrived at this conclusion. After all, she has been a minister for 10 of those years, including two at the Treasury.
“According to Sir Patrick Minford, an economist who is advising her campaign, interest rates might have to rise to up to seven per cent to offset the inflationary impact of tax cuts. Mortgage holders and businesses will want to know if she agrees.” The Times added: “Similarly Ms Truss should explain her Brexit conversion, particularly when her pre-referendum warnings that it would hurt British exporters have been proved right.
“She says Whitehall efficiency gains can pay for tax cuts. As a former chief secretary to the Treasury, where does she think these savings can be made? And why as foreign secretary did she resist cuts demanded of her own department? “As a farming minister, she claimed to champion farmers, but as a trade minister she negotiated a deal with Australia so damaging to farmers the government refused to put it to a parliamentary vote.
“Ms Truss’s eye-catching promises of tax cuts have captured headlines and made her the favourite to win the leadership.
“But with five weeks to go before the ballot closes, the public has a right to know whether she really is a conviction politician or simply a media-savvy shapeshifter.”
The Times leader supporting Rishi is just as powerfully argued: “At a time of soaring inflation, looming recession and intense pressure on living standards, Mr Sunak is the right and responsible choice.
“In a cabinet too often distinguished by lack of distinction and slavish loyalty to a flawed prime minister, Mr Sunak stood out as a minister willing to confront the questions Mr Johnson too often ducked.
“Propelled into high office on the eve of a global pandemic, he has rightly received much of the credit for an imaginative government response to an unprecedented crisis. Since then, he has correctly prioritised controlling inflation rather than pursue the unfunded tax cuts for which so many of his colleagues clamour.
“It now falls to the 200,000 members of the Conservative party to exercise their judgment. Their task is not merely to choose a leader to serve a narrow, partisan agenda. It is to elect a prime minister to govern responsibly in the national interest amid economic crisis at home and tumult abroad. Only Mr Sunak has proven himself willing to confront the compromises and sacrifices that this difficult moment demands. “Tory members must recognise the choice before them is between hard reality or consoling fiction. Voters will not forgive the party another fit of self-indulgence.”
If the Times is right – and its readers think it is – a Truss premiership will
ruin many British Asian businesses.