Fate of the country is now in the hands of less than 200,000 Tory voters
Conservative party members have begun receiving their ballot papers ahead of deciding who will be Britain’s next prime minister.
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss will go head-to-head in another husting this evening as a crucial week in the race for Downing Street gets underway.
Fewer than 200,000 or so Tory members will decide their next party leader, with postal votes dropping on doorsteps from this morning. The exact figure is unknown but was around 180,000 in 2019 and is thought to have declined since.
Foreign Secretary Truss is the heavy favourite to take over from Boris Johnson but both she and former Chancellor Sunak have been unveiling a policy blitz in a bid to woo the small electorate.
Sunak is under pressure to overhaul his campaign as polling suggests he is some way behind, while Truss was given a further boost after another party big whig endorsed her.
Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi became the latest Conservative heavyweight to come out in favour of the frontrunner, as he praised her ‘booster’ economic approach.
He appeared to take a jab at his predecessor’s ‘doomster’ outlook, implying that Sunak subscribed to the ‘status quo’ and a ‘stale economic orthodoxy’.
Zahawi’s backing comes after the likes of former leadership contender Tom Tugendhat, defence secretary Ben Wallace and former Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis all rowed in behind the Truss campaign in recent days.
The candidates take their campaigns to Exeter at 7pm this evening to seek support from members in the second of 12 visits around the country.
In a last-ditch effort to win over the party faithful before they start voting, Sunak attempted to shake off his image as a tax-hiking former chancellor by promising the ‘biggest income tax cut since Margaret Thatcher’s government’.
It is a significant U-turn on his previous rhetoric and is likely to lead to suggestions that his campaign is becoming increasingly desperate.
Sunak vowed to slash the basic rate from 20% to 16% within seven years if he becomes prime minister, in a move immediately branded as a ‘flip-flop’ by allies of Truss – after weeks of labelling her plans for sweeping tax cuts as ‘comforting fairy tales’.
The former chancellor branded his policy ‘radical’ yet ‘realistic’ and listed principles he would never compromise on, in a thinly veiled swipe at his rival.
‘Firstly I will never get taxes down in a way that just puts inflation up. Secondly I will never make promises I can’t pay for. And thirdly I will always be honest about the challenges we face’, he said.
But critics noted that the time frame for the tax reduction – with the deadline possibly as late as December 2029 – means it does not help families amid the current cost-of-living crisis.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke, who is backing Ms Truss, said: ‘Liz will cut taxes in seven weeks, not seven years.’
A Truss campaign source added: ‘It’s only a shame he didn’t do this as Chancellor when he repeatedly raised taxes.
Long-lost ‘Sun Temple’ found buried in Egyptian desert after 4,500 years‘He has also made it conditional on getting growth first – knowing full well that his corporation tax rises are contractionary.
‘The public and Conservative Party members can see through these flip flops and U-turns.’
In declaring his support for Ms Truss, Mr Zahawi wrote in The Daily Telegraph: ‘Liz understands that the status quo isn’t an option in times of crisis…
‘Liz will overturn the stale economic orthodoxy and run our economy in a Conservative way.’
Meanwhile Sunak’s bid for the premiership was given a boost by the endorsement of Damian Green, the chair of the One Nation group of Conservative MPs.
The former deputy PM who said he trusted the former chancellor to ‘unify the party’ and ‘conjure up a solution’ to crises.
Tax has dominated the bitter race for No 10, with Mr Sunak advocating prudence with the nation’s finances, while Ms Truss is pledging large tax cuts of more than £30 billion, paid in part by more borrowing.
Although Conservative members have the chance to vote as early as this week, they have until the beginning of September to cast their ballot, with the winner announced on September 5.
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