Key backing buoys Truss in race for UK’s top post
LONDON — Liz Truss, the frontrunner in the race lead to Britain’s Conservatives, has won more endorsements from heavyweight figures in the cabinet as members of the country’s ruling party began a month of voting on Monday to decide the next occupant of 10 Downing Street.
Rishi Sunak, Truss’ rival in the contest to become the party leader and prime minister, vowed to make up lost ground with a plan for future tax cuts — and potentially to fund a future women’s soccer World Cup in Britain after England’s Lionesses won the European championship.
Foreign Secretary Truss attended Sunday’s final against Germany, and the first victory by any England football team in a major tournament since 1966 wiped Sunak’s long-term tax-slashing plan off the front pages of all newspapers except The Daily Telegraph.
The Conservative Party contenders were going head to head later on Monday in a members’ hustings in the southwestern city of Exeter — the second of 12 such events before the winner is announced on Sept 5.
Sunak, a polished debater and a former chancellor of the exchequer, needs to recapture momentum after Truss steamed into a strong polling lead on a platform of immediate tax cuts to address Britain’s worst cost-of-living crisis in generations.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi joined other luminaries of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet in backing the foreign secretary against Sunak, his predecessor in the Treasury.
“Liz understands that the status quo isn’t 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 ‘doomster’ one, in order to address cost-of-living woes and the challenges on the world stage,” the new chancellor said.
Sunak’s resignation from the cabinet of the scandal-tainted Johnson helped spark a ministerial exodus that forced the prime minister to quit last month.
As they began receiving postal and online ballot forms, a large chunk of the roughly 200,000 Tory members are said by pollsters to nurse a grievance against Sunak — one shared by Johnson.
The prime minister is not formally taking sides, but has told aides that he intends to give his successor some words of advice, “whoever she may be”, the Sunday Times reported.
Despite endorsements from the likes of Zahawi, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis and Tory centrist Tom Tugendhat, Truss has warned against complacency.
Heading into the Exeter hustings, the foreign secretary has markedly improved in her sometimes robotic public delivery — seen most notoriously in a 2014 speech when she was environment secretary.
Returning to her former field, the Remainer-turned-Brexit zealot promised over the weekend to “unleash” farmers from European Union regulations to improve the UK’s food security.
Priorities promised
Truss also promised to tackle labor shortages in agriculture, partly caused by post-Brexit restrictions on immigration that have forced farmers to leave fruit rotting in fields and to slaughter healthy pigs.
And Truss unveiled a plan on education, vowing that all school students with top grades would automatically get an invitation to apply for Oxford, Cambridge or other prestigious universities.
Both Sunak and Truss went to Oxford — the latter after attending a state school in the northern city of Leeds that she says let too many pupils down by failing to push them to excel.
Both contenders have stressed the need for unity once the election is out of the way, aware that the opposition Labour Party is riding high in the polls amid the economic crisis and the political tumult surrounding Johnson.
But their supporters have not been holding back, especially combative Truss ally Nadine Dorries.
The culture secretary retweeted an image portraying Johnson as Julius Caesar, being stabbed in the back by Sunak.