Tory leadership race latest: Truss strong favourite as Sunak pitches himself as ‘Thatcherite’

Either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will become the next prime minister after Tory MPs put them into the final round of the Conservative leadership election.

Now the power drains away from Westminster and into the hands of Conservative Party members. Here is a look at how one of them will be handed the keys to No 10.

How did they become the final two?

Conservative MPs culled nine candidates over five rounds of voting before choosing Ms Truss, the Foreign Secretary, and Mr Sunak, a former chancellor, as their favourites.

Despite coming second on the first four rounds, trade minister Penny Mordaunt was leapfrogged by Ms Truss on Wednesday to be eliminated.

Mr Sunak was the favourite with Tory MPs, winning 137 votes in the final round to Ms Truss’s 113. But bookies have Ms Truss as favourite after early indications suggested she has the bigger backing among the crucial electorate that will make the ultimate decision.

Read this report to find who exactly chooses the winner and how do they decide:

Liz Truss vowed to “hit the ground running by immediately cutting taxes, growing our economy and unleashing the potential of everyone” in her pitch in the Daily Mail.

She attacked the government’s tax record, which was overseen by her competitor Rishi Sunak until he resigned, triggering Boris Johnson’s ultimate downfall.

“We have been going in the wrong direction on tax, with the tax burden at its highest in 70 years,” she wrote.

Boris Johnson has not publicly backed any of the candidates to replace him, but some of his most loyal allies have come out for Ms Truss.

Rishi Sunak declared himself as the “heir to Margaret Thatcher” as he emerged as the Conservative Party’s favourite candidate winning 137 votes.

“My values are Thatcherite,” he wrote in The Telegraph.

Elaborating on his plans ahead of the final face-off, he wrote he believes in “national sovereignty”, “strong borders” and “tight control on both legal and illegal immigration.

Emphasising on the “primacy of economic growth”, he wrote it “can only be achieved in a foundation of low inflation and sound public finances”.

“And the best way to achieve economic growth is cutting taxes and bureaucracy, and boosting private sector investment and innovation.”

He also dialled down the attack on his competitor Liz Truss, saying she is someone he “like and respect”.

Claiming to be someone who knows “how to get results in government”, he wrote that when the pandemic hit, he designed the furlough scheme within days, “provided businesses with the financial support they needed to survive and protected millions of jobs to ensure that – despite locking our country down for months at a time – we had an economy left at the end of it”.

“I deliver,” he added as he pitched himself for the prime ministerial position.

“And as well as being the best candidate to deliver a 21st century set of Thatcherite reforms, all the evidence shows I am the best candidate to win the next election.”

The Conservative party is facing a brutal summer of vicious infighting, as Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss slug it out for the keys to 10 Downing Street in what is expected to be the most tightly-fought leadership contest in decades (Andrew Woodcock writes).

There were appeals for the two contenders to succeed Boris Johnson to avoid “blue on blue” attacks on one another, amid Tory fears that a bloody battle will undermine efforts to restore public trust in the party.

The new prime minister will be chosen by an estimated 160,000 Conservative members, prompting calls for an immediate election after the new Tory leader is installed on 5 September to give all voters a say on who runs Britain.

Labour’s Conor McGinn said Tory members were being offered “two continuity candidates … both stooges of the Johnson administration whose fingerprints are all over the state the country finds itself in today”.

Dominic Cummings has mocked hardline Conservative Brexiteers for backing “truly useless Remainer” Liz Truss after she made into the final leadership run-off with Rishi Sunak (Adam Forrest writes).

The foreign secretary is now the bookies’ favourite to be Britain’s next prime minister after rival Penny Mordaunt was eliminated in the final round of voting by the party’s MPs.

The former No 10 strategist, who masterminded the Leave campaign, scoffed at the European Research Group (ERG) for getting behind Truss in her surge past Mordaunt.

“Totally on-brand for ERG to back a truly useless Remainer who did nothing in govt except gabble with hacks cos she’s reassuringly mad behind the eyes,” Cummings tweeted.

Boris Johnson’s ex-adviser turned nemisis also claimed the PM quietly supported Truss’ campaign because he “knows she’s mad and thinks she’ll blow and he can make a comeback”.

No pussy-bow blouses, no mention of the Falklands or talk of free market economics and balancing the books. This type of behaviour must carry tough disincentives, like literal handbaggings for anyone who even tries to engage in these terrible impersonations.

We’ve had four Conservative prime ministers since Margaret Thatcher’s tenure at No 10 was brutally ended and, without wanting to sound insensitive, she died nearly a decade ago, in which time we’ve decapitated the party leader a further three times. We have also exited the EU, come through a global pandemic and are facing very high levels of inflation. Surely the Conservative Party has something better to offer than a rerun of 1979?

Salmah Shah calls for Tory candidates to stop dealing in Iron Lady nostalgia:

The team at Independent TV has compiled the following review of Boris Johnson’s time at the top:

Liz Truss said she would “immediately” cut taxes if she beats Rishi Sunak to become the next prime minister.

Setting out her agenda in the Daily Mail after securing a spot in the final round of the Tory leadership race, the foreign secretary said she wanted to make Britain an “aspiration nation”.

She wrote: “I will hit the ground running by immediately cutting taxes, growing our economy and unleashing the potential of everyone in the United Kingdom.

“This is a key part of my mission to build an aspiration nation, where people from all parts of Britain, from all backgrounds, can succeed on the basis of their talent and hard work alone.

“That is how I got to where I am today, and that is what I want for everyone in our country.”

Her opponent, the former chancellor, said he would cut taxes only once inlation was brought under control from its current 40-year high.

In the Mail article Ms Truss also said she would fight against “identity politics”, “cancel culture” and “people who talk down our country”.

She echoed Mr Sunak in saying she is the only one who can defeat Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party at an election.

Nicola Sturgeon’s government has been accused at Westminster of “illegality” in spending British taxpayers’ cash on its campaign to “break up Britain”.

Public money has been used by the SNP administration to produce “party political propaganda” while neutral civil servants have been engaged in the bid for a second Scottish independence referendum, the House of Lords heard.

The criticism was levelled byTory Scotland Office minister Lord Offord of Garvel using lines from national poet Robert Burns to dismiss the SNP argument to for independence.

Lord Offord said: “This is thin gruel.

“As the bard said ‘Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware, That jaups in luggies’.”

Taken from Burns’s Address To A Haggis, it roughly translates as “Old Scotland wants no watery stuff, that splashes about in small wooden dishes.”

“A choice of two futures” is a slogan political parties often use in general election campaigns. Now, Conservative Party members must make such a choice, as they decide whether Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss will be our next prime minister (Andrew Grice writes).

The contest should finally resolve a split inside the Tories since the country’s decision to leave the EU six years ago left the party with an identity crisis. On the surface, the choice is between the fiscal responsibility offered by Sunak and the immediate tax cuts promised by Truss.

But this debate masks a more fundamental question: should Brexit Britain adopt the Truss vision to exploit its new freedoms by becoming a low-tax, low-regulation country which diverges from EU rules, with a “smaller state” – dubbed “Singapore-on-Thames” by Brexiteers? Or should it take the Sunak road: living within its means, balancing its books and recognising the growing demands on public services, not least from an ageing population?

“The party has a real choice; it’s a fork in the road moment,” one senior Tory MP told me. Another said: “This will now be a real battle of ideas.”