The five conservative contenders are still competing for the next British Prime Minister clashed for tax discounts in a second televised debate on Sunday, with the two main – Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss – intensifying their battle on the economy.
Without a clear candidate to succeed Boris Johnson who withdrew after a series of scandals, the battle to be the next leader remains unpredictable and more and more fracturing, exhibiting rifts in the conservative party in power.
Former finance minister, Rishi Sunak, has become the favorite among the 358 conservative legislators, who will hold other votes this week to reduce the field of the contenders to the last two.
He said that Sunday evening, his number one priority would be to tackle inflation and would not aggravate it before delivering tax discounts.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Liz Truss, who proposed plans aimed at chopping the increases in payroll tax and corporate tax at the cost of more than 30 billion pounds ($ 36 billion) per year, said Sunak had increased taxes at the highest level in 70 years.
“The increase in taxes at the moment will suffocate economic growth,” she said in the debate, organized by the ITV diffuser.
Sunak replied by saying that he “would love to reduce taxes” but it would have a higher inflation cost. “This economy is not a curator, it is socialism,” he said.
Minister Junior, Penny Mordaunt, who is currently in third position, also targeted Sunak, saying that the public needed “immediate action” to combat the cost of living.
Race Still Open
A JL partners survey for the Sunday Telegraph suggested that almost half of the conservative voters thought Sunak would do a good Prime Minister, before Truss and Mordaunt.
However, Truss also has a large support, especially those most loyal to Johnson, and Mordaunt has exceeded the surveys of the 200,000 party members who will finally choose who will become the conservative and therefore the Prime Minister.
In a demonstration of the opening of the race, an investigation of the members of the party for the website of the conservative house suggested on Saturday the former Minister of Equalities Kemi Badenoch was now ahead of the others, with Truss in Second and Mordaunt, currently the favorite of bookmakers, sliding to third.
This came after the fifth candidate, Tom Togendhat, president of the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, dominated a viewers’ survey after the first televised debate on Friday.
The one who obtains the position will take care of inflation and weak economic growth, as well as the public’s lack of confidence in politics after the time of power of Johnson.
Opinion polls also suggest that conservatives considerably take the opposition work.
When they were asked by the moderator, not all candidates said that they would not have an immediate election if they won. No national election should take place in Great Britain until 2024.
A candidate will be eliminated every day in the next three days, leaving an end two to cope with the verdict of the members of the Conservative Party. They will vote for the winner who will be announced on September 5.
