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The five Conservative candidates still contending to be Britain’s next prime minister will face off in a second televised debate on Sunday, renewing their feuds over tax policy and concerns such as transgender rights. With no clear candidate to replace Boris Johnson, who is stepping down following a series of scandals, the battle for the next leader continues to remain unpredictable and progressively fractious, exposing rifts within the ruling Conservative Party.
Ex-finance minister Rishi Sunak has surfaced as the favourite among the 358 Conservative lawmakers, who will vote again this week to narrow the field to a final two.
According to a JL Partners poll for the Sunday Telegraph, nearly half of Conservative voters thought he’d make a good prime minister, ahead of foreign minister Liz Truss and junior minister Penny Mordaunt.
Truss, on the other hand, has widespread support, including from Johnson’s most ardent supporters, and junior minister Penny Mordaunt has topped polls of the 200,000 Conservative Party members who will ultimately decide who becomes Conservative leader and thus prime minister.
In a sign of how close the race is, a survey of Conservative Party members conducted on Saturday for the Conservative Home website found that former Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch was now in front of the others, with Truss in second and Mordaunt, the bookmakers’ favourite, dropping to third.
After the first TV debate on Friday, the fifth applicant, Tom Tugendhat, chair of parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, surpassed a viewers’ poll.
Whoever is chosen will have to deal with skyrocketing inflation and economic recession, as well as the public’s lack of trust in politics following Johnson’s scandal-plagued tenure. Opinion polls also show the Conservatives trailing the opposition Labour Party significantly.
‘A Fairy Tale’
Sunak called Truss’ proposed plans to eliminate payroll and corporation tax increases at a cost of more than 30 billion pounds ($36 billion) a year “a fairy tale” during the first TV debate on Friday.
She retorted that her opponent’s tax increases, proposed while Sunak was still in charge of the Treasury, harmed business investment at a difficult time for the economy.
There were also heated debates about transgender issues and Johnson’s candour.
“I have immense respect and admiration for all of my colleagues who are vying for leadership positions. And it’s right that we’re having heated debates about these issues “Sunak’s decision to resign from the Treasury last week aided the cascade of broker downgrades that brought Johnson down.
