Two of the leading candidates for the leadership of Britain’s Conservative Party and the UK prime minister have decided not to take part in the third televised debate, scheduled for Tuesday night on Sky News, journalist Stephen Swinford reported from London on Monday. Daily newspaper “The Times”. This afternoon, the list of Downing Street nominees will be reduced from five to four in the third round of voting.
Tuesday and Wednesday there will be other rounds for only two rounds. At that time, word had passed to nearly 200,000 party members. They will decide by postal vote, with the result announced on September 5.
Rishi Sunak (former Finance Minister) and Liz Truss (Secretary of State) withdrew from the third debate to focus on voter contact – which at this point includes 358 MPs from the Conservative bench. There will also be echoes of the bad impression left by the two previous debates, Friday and Sunday. “It is to be feared that the two brutal debates which have already taken place have done incredibly harm to conservatives,” Swynford writes.
“We stand ready to have further discussions if we are lucky enough to make it to the next round, including Sky News,” the Sunak team explained. “We should focus on the sessions with MPs in the coming days, then we can review the discussions that will take place during the combat phase,” Truss’ team emphasized.
ConservativeHome advised the five candidates still in competition – Sunak, Truss, Benny Mordaunt (Secretary of State for Commerce), Kimi Badenouch (Former Minister of State for Equality) and Tom Tugendhat (Member who has never sat in government – canceling the page’s editor, Paul Goodman, describing The first debate as “candidates throw buckets of dung at each other” and asks whether “taking the most pernicious step to overthrow the opponent” helps “to form a stable government if they win.”
Rishi Sunak Under Fire
The second debate, Sunday night on ITV, was seen by the British press as more aggressive than Friday’s on Channel 4. Frankly, he saw his lack of the indicated government experience. It is expected to be canceled in Monday’s vote.
Sunak has been accused of causing a recession by calling for austerity to balance the books, by rejecting anyone else’s idea of a tax cut. Truss also promised to “cancel the increase in Rishi’s Social Security contributions,” a reference to Rishi’s policy when he was working in finance.
This has been criticized by an adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as Sunak’s enthusiasm for controlling inflation and thus tax cuts is not “common Thatcherism”, as he claims. “Thatcher didn’t wait to cut taxes, he cut them right away in the 1979 budget,” the first of his 11-year consulate.
Most voted in the first two rounds of voting, and Sunak appears to be “the guy who should fall.” “Families need immediate help right now. Why doesn’t Rishi understand that?” The former minister raised taxes, using his opponents’ “socialist” label. “Rice, you have raised taxes to the highest level in 70 years. This is not going to fuel growth,” Truss warned.
“I’d like to be here and say, ‘I’m going to lower this tax, that tax, and things will be fine. Sunak defended it. If Mordaunt admits to taking on debt for current spending (and not just for investment, as Sunak suggests), he says this goes further than Jeremy Corbyn, the former left-wing leader of the Labor Party.
The rising star on the right wing
Badnock promised an “emergency budget” and attacked Sunak over a case of fraud with support funds during the pandemic, in the billions of pounds, which led to the foreign secretary’s resignation. Badenock, who was working in the ministry, ensures that he informed the then minister. Sunak responded to rivals by accusing them of “a fictional economy with unfunded promises”.
The fourth largest vote by MPs in the previous two rounds, Badenoch was praised by conservative newspapers for being transparent and clear, despite entering the race as the least well known of the hopefuls. From the party’s right wing, voters have quarreled with Truss and figures such as former Brexit Secretary David Frost have advised her to surrender in favor of the latter, but she has been better at debates and there are heralds of higher flights.
Mordaunt has attacked for his earlier positions in favor of the self-identification of gender, which he now seeks to deny. He told the newspaper, “TeThe Sunday Times: “I wouldn’t call her a liar, I think it’s very likely that she didn’t really understand what she was supporting. It’s a very complicated topic.”
Who goes to the final?
Sunak was supposed to be one of the finalists, but second place looks open. In the race for silver, Truss has been criticized for her support of EU membership in the 2016 referendum, even though she has become an ardent Brexiteer. I was a liberal democrat and a ‘rest’. Sunak asked him.
Sunak insists in his campaign videos that he has been “a pro-Brexit since day one”. Mordaunt referred to leaving the EU as something to praise Boris Johnson, for whom – in a rare moment of consensus – he told all candidates that there was no room in the supposed government they would form if they won the internal elections. Nor do they see any reason to recall early legislatures.
As for the outgoing former prime minister, Monday will have a somewhat surreal moment in the House of Commons, as he opens the parliamentary debate on his government’s confidence motion, which was introduced after he announced his departure. The maneuver is merely a reaction to a Labour’s gesture, which made a censure motion – which made his executive debate impossible – to demand that Johnson leave office now, rather than remain in the administration until his successor is elected.