Liz Truss v Rishi Sunak: The Final Two Candidates to Decide Who Will be the Next Tory Leader
Words Destiny Fakoya
The race to decide who will become the next Prime Minister has been heated and surprising, to say the least. A few weeks ago the odds were between Mordaunt and Sunak, however has since changed over the last couple of weeks, as Liz Truss leads Rishi Sunak by 62% to 38% among Tory members. The pair moved onto the final voting round as the final contenders to replace Johnson as party leader. The ballot will proceed from 4 August till early September 2022.
In the beginning, Sunak was considered by the majority of the party to be a good leader to replace Johnson, however Sunak’s achilles heel that continuously undermines his popularity is his wife’s controversial financial status. However, as Sunak has made it to the final round it would seem his banking on his competence and slick presentation to assure Tory members he is the man for the job in the upcoming election. This logic is undermined by the considerable advantage Truss has over Sunak; Truss has been determined to tax cuts since she stepped into No.10 and is determined to drive enterprise growth and increase opportunities. She claims ‘It's wrong that we currently have the highest tax burden in this country that we've had for 70 year’ and accuses Rishi of being at the helm of the cause.
A crucial factor that propels Truss as the leading contender to date is that Tory members remain unforgiving of the role Sunak played in Johnson’s fall. As well as the fixed penalty notice for attending a party during lockdown pushed him down the list of contenders for No. 10. It seems that Johnson’s lockdown birthday party is the stain on Sunak’s career he cant seem to quite get rid of. However, on a more positive note, he can hold out hope for the support and recognition he receives from 2019 voters who remain undecided on who they will vote for during the upcoming election. The poll among the 2019 voters shows only 13% of the public don’t know enough about the former Chancellor to say how they feel about him, the figure is more than double that for Truss (29%). When it comes to public opinion Truss has more to prove and needs to quickly do so ahead of the next election - it is very well a deciding factor that must not be overlooked.
It begs the question should whether Tory members fully commit to a tug-of-war between two Thatcherite versions or should they play the long game - back the candidate with more public support that stands the chance of defeating Labour. Sunak is a more promising prospective for the Tories of retaining the 2019 voters who brought them into power and defeating Labour in the next election.