Britain | An equally strong duo is fighting for the British Prime Ministership: Truss admires Thatcher, Sunaki may be burdened by a backstab, both are committed to Brexit

London

One at least one thing is certain: Britain’s next prime minister will not be a white man.

For the leadership of the Conservative Party and at the same time for the prime ministership, an equally strong duo competes: the foreign minister Liz Truss46, and former finance minister Rishi Sunak42.

Both have chances to win. That’s why the race will be tough, even bloody.

Who are they right?

Truss, who has been foreign minister since last fall, appeals to the membership with the conservatives’ traditional values ​​and patriotism. The heart is clearly on the right.

He admires the iron lady Margaret Thatcher and push for tax relief. Truss is described also riding on top of a tank in the best Thatcher style.

Truss comes from the professor family that was leaning to the left. The daughter’s conversion to a conservative happened through the Liberal Democratic Party. He received his education at the famous Oxford University.

In the year Truss, who entered the parliament in 2010, took off in a big way when the new prime minister Boris Johnson appointed him as Minister of Foreign Trade in the summer of 2019. After Brexit was confirmed, Truss was able to sign Britain’s new trade agreements, which received a lot of publicity.

At the same time, it was forgotten that most of the agreements were copies of old agreements concluded by the EU.

It was also forgotten that Truss had once supported Britain remaining in the EU. Today, Truss is committed to Brexit. As foreign minister, he has also been responsible for Britain’s – very tense – Brexit relations with the European Union.

Former Finance Minister Sunak, on the other hand, was already in favor of leaving the EU when the EU referendum was organized in June 2016.

Even then, Brexit was not an obvious choice for a young centre-right politician who had entered the parliament only a year earlier and had a working background in investment circles. Since then, the Brexit position has been a real boost for Sunak.

Nostetta also gave Sunaki a position as Johnson’s (previously) favorite.

Sunaki managed to be considered a relatively competent finance minister, until the corona pandemic and Britain’s huge indebtedness, record tax increases and inflation, which was already running at nine percent, spoiled the atmosphere.

South coast Born in Southampton, Sunak’s family has roots in India, although his parents lived in East Africa before moving to Britain.

Sunak’s father was a general practitioner and mother a pharmacist. The family religion is Hinduism.

India also becomes Sunak’s fashion designer wife Akshata Murty, whose father is a billionaire entrepreneur. The arrangements related to the wife’s tax status were already at one point jeopardizing the husband’s political career.

Sunak attended the prestigious and expensive Winchester College private school, after which he also continued to Oxford University. Both Sunak and Truss both read a well-suited degree package for future ministers, consisting of philosophy and political and economic sciences.

Sunak got Trussia more votes on Wednesday in the knockout votewhere power was exercised by members of parliament from the conservative party.

However, according to opinion polls, Truss is more popular among the rank-and-file members of the party.

And it is the rank-and-file members of the Conservatives who decide which of the top two wins. Voting ends on September 2nd, and the result will be announced on September 5th.

Wednesday night The William Hill betting company estimates Truss’s popularity to be higher than Sunak’s.

When a rank-and-file conservative chooses his new leader, he thinks about the choice from at least three angles.

One: Which of the candidates do you like personally?

Two: Which of the candidates would be more qualified to lead the party and the country?

Three: Which of the candidates is strong enough to defeat Labor and its leader Keir Starmer’s in the next general election?

Prime minister Johnson had to hand in his resignation because he became a burden on himself. Conservative MPs feared that Johnson would no longer be able to win the election.

Both Truss and Sunak have both been prominent ministers in the Johnson administration. In this way, it can be difficult to make a nest separation in the former “Johnson style”.

However, both Truss and Sunak are lucky that the burden is shared. If the deputy trade minister had made it to the finals Penny Mordaunt – which was not part of Johnson’s core government – the situation would have been completely different.

Sunakia the fact that he “betrayed” Johnson by resigning as finance minister at the beginning of July can also weigh on the members’ vote. The resignation of key ministers set off an avalanche of resignations that pulled the rug out from under Johnson once and for all.

A backstab could be Sunak’s fate if enough people think that he has betrayed the whole party at the same time.

Truss, on the other hand, did not resign, but remained in the government alongside Johnson.

Conservatives the membership is characteristically grown-up – and, as the saying goes, conservative. Those who want to lead the party have to adjust their words accordingly.

However, conservatism has not meant the same as backwardness, at least in the case of Johnson’s successor selection.

Among the party’s eight presidential candidates, there were only two white men.

Half of the candidates were women. The share of people from ethnic minorities was also half, i.e. four out of eight. It is pluralism that gives impetus to the Conservatives’ acknowledgment of Labor.

Traditionally, it is the Labor Party that has considered itself pluralistic. However, Labor has not yet seen a single woman in leadership, while the Conservatives have already had two female prime ministers.

And now Trussi can already become the third.

Equality however, is not the theme with which this leader vote will be won. It’s not climate change either, because there is already hope on the ground to relax the rather ambitious net zero program of the Johnson government.

Some of the people certainly hope for tax cuts, but not necessarily all. In recent years, the Conservative Party has moved even more to the left in economic matters. The pandemic strengthened the trend.

Now something as abstract as hope can become a decisive factor.

Which of the racing duo can raise hope that Britain is going in a better direction? Who will help to forget the old sorrows and problems: Johnson, inflation, lack of money, the war raging in Europe and possible Brexit disappointments?

Which gives hope for better?

The problems are not decreasing, on the contrary.