Leadership rivals get first party grilling in Britain

LEEDS, United Kingdom－British Conservatives Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss on Thursday underwent their first grilling in front of party members as they wage a bitter duel to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The encounter in Leeds, northern England, was the opening bout of 12 nationwide events as the grassroots members elect a new leader, after a cabinet revolt forced scandal-hit Johnson to quit.

The result will be announced on Sept 5, and Truss has built up a strong lead in surveys of Tory members after vowing immediate tax cuts as Britain confronts a slump in living standards.

But not all those issues are getting equal attention as the two vie for the votes of about 180,000 Conservative Party members.

With Britain facing its tightest cost-of-living squeeze for decades amid soaring energy prices and 9.4 percent inflation, the economy has unsurprisingly dominated the contest－and it's here where the two candidates differ most.

Truss is promising immediate tax cuts, saying she will scrap a 1.25 percent income tax hike introduced by Sunak, a former finance minister, to help fund the nation's health and social care programs, and will cancel a planned corporation tax rise. Truss, the foreign secretary, says she will fund the cuts through borrowing.

Sunak says he would get inflation under control before trimming taxes, although, facing pressure from polls showing Truss is ahead in the race, he has pledged to scrap the sales tax on domestic energy bills for a year.

Moral high ground

Both claim the moral high ground. Truss says hiking taxes amid a cost-of-living crisis is "morally wrong", while Sunak says "it's not moral" to pass bills on to future generations.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent think tank, notes that "the candidates have been less forthcoming about their intentions for public spending." They have made little mention of Johnson's repeated promises to channel investment into deprived areas of central and northern England that lag behind the wealthier south. The institute said Truss' plans were likely to bring austerity, because "in the end lower taxes do mean lower spending".

Their two televised head-to-head debates so far were fractious, although the second, on Tuesday, was abruptly halted when the TalkTV moderator fainted live on air.

In Leeds, there was no such drama, but plenty of hard-nosed questioning from Tory members. The candidates went on stage one after the other, rather than squaring off at lecterns from opposite ends of a TV studio.

The members applauded co-chairman Andrew Stephenson when he observed that their party is poised to appoint Britain's third woman prime minister, or its first one of color.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace used an editorial published in The Times newspaper after the Leeds event to throw his support behind Truss, saying she was the "only candidate who has both the breadth and depth of experience needed".