Truss and Sunak take a Right turn for the worse
No10 rivals play migration card
THE Tory leadership race has lurched to the right as Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss battle to win over party members.
Their campaigns spent the weekend trying to outdo each other by promising hardline approaches on issues such as immigration and Brexit.
Amid the vitriol and worrying turn to the right, the two Tories are due to lock horns on the BBC tonight in the first head-to-head TV debate.
Truss and Sunak have been announcing “red meat” policies to win support with Tory members, who will decide the leadership contest.
The two candidates clashed over immigration, although they both committed to Boris Johnson’s controversial Rwanda deportation plan.
The asylum scheme has been condemned as immoral, unworkable and costly – with charities, church leaders and opposition parties among those who have expressed their dismay.
Sunak said he would do “whatever it takes” to get the stalled plan “off the ground”. The ex-chancellor said “no option should be off the
table” to make the Rwanda scheme work. He published a 10-point immigration plan including capping the number of refugees the UK accepts each year and scrapping asylum hotels.
Trashing Johnson’s record, Sunak said: “We do not have control of our borders.” Foreign Secretary Truss also vowed to strengthen the Rwanda scheme, while both candidates pledged to strike similar migration deals with other countries.
Truss tried to boost her Brexiteer credentials with a promise to improve growth rates with “full-fat freeports”.
She has vowed to cut red tape and increase investment in a bid to steal a march on Sunak, an advocate of
freeports for years. He called China the “biggest long-term threat” to Britain and accused it of “stealing our technology and infiltrating our universities”.
He vowed a UK ban on the Confucius Institutes, which claim to focus on Chinese culture and language but have been labelled propaganda tools.
He would also consider limiting acquisitions of UK assets amid concerns about the scale of Chinese investment.
But ex-Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who is backing Truss, had a biting put-down for Sunak, saying: “This ‘tough on China’ announcement is surprising. After all, over the last two years, the Treasury has pushed hard for an economic deal with China.
“This is despite China brutally cracking down on peaceful democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, threatening Taiwan and committing genocide on the Uyghurs. I have one question, ‘where have you been over the last two years?’”