'Nothing Conservative About That': TV Debates Return For UK's Next PM

Conservative leadership debates have returned again, with hopefuls Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak trading barbs over tax and the China threat. Meanwhile, the BBC failed to tease any new promises or policies out of the pair and even flubbed an attempted gotcha moment against one of the candidates.

The main gulf between would-be Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak remains whether to cut taxes now or later, with the candidates appearing to otherwise present generally continuity-Boris political positions now and throughout the campaign to date. Speaking at the third televised leaders’ debate — given prime time coverage by all major UK broadcasters despite the general public not having a vote in this competition, as only Conservative Party members choose the next leader of the Conservative Party — Sunak gave his most gloves-off performance of the contest so far, calling Truss’s tax-cutting plan unconservative and unsound.

Indeed, Sunak spoke over Truss so frequently in the early part of the debate the BBC moderator stepped in and asked him to give her a chance to reply.

At the heart of the disagreement are differing views of how to grow the economy. Sunak promises to tackle inflation now and cut taxes later when finances permit. Truss, on the other hand, says cutting taxes and regulations now will allow the economy to flourish.

Sunak’s position appears to be totally at odds with his time actually in power so far. As chancellor, he increased spending and taxation considerably, although he says that the Covid crisis forced him to do this.

This record was one Truss spoke to, saying of Sunak: “This chancellor has increased taxes to the highest level for 70 years and now we’re facing inflation,” adding that she would defer paying back Covid debt to give people and businesses tax cuts now.

Sunak rejected this approach with the most cutting words of the evening, remarking of passing debt payments onto future generations that “there’s nothing conservative about that” and asking rhetorically: “If we’re not for sound money, then what’s the point of the Conservative party?”

If Sunak asking the country to believe he would be a tax-cutting Conservative was stretching credulity to breaking point, perhaps pushing even further was Truss’s offhand remark that Sunak’s economic views were “scaremongering… project fear”. Those with even moderately long political memories will remember that Truss was a key agent of the original project fear during the Brexit referendum days when she campaigned against Britain leaving the European Union by parroting lurid warnings by the then-Cameron government that to do so would be the undoing of Britain.

When challenged on this, Truss claimed to have learnt from her mistakes and now no longer trusted the Treasury because of its politicised role in Brexit. Truss now claims to support Brexit and points to her track record as a minister in the post-Brexit era signing trade deals with other nations as buttressing that.

While the evening was about the spectacle of top politicians ripping into each other, the BBC couldn’t resist attempting to draw blood too. BBC political editor Chris Mason held up a copy of Britannia Unchained, a 2012 book co-authored by five Conservative MPs about free enterprise and read a passage from it. He said:

Liz Truss, on your ideas of challenging the economic orthodoxy, you have talked about this for many years. In fact, you co-wrote a book the best part of ten years ago that set out some of these arguments. In that book, you and your fellow authors talked about the audience in here tonight, and at home watching and listening as “among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early, our productivity is poor.” Is that what you’re saying?

As framed, this felt like a gotcha moment, but Truss was quick to point out that she hadn’t even written the words being quoted and the man who had was in fact supporting her rival’s campaign. This turning of the tables on the host elicited laughter from the audience and the BBC didn’t press the point further.

While another flashpoint in the debate was on China, this again failed to elicit any new information from the candidates. While their tough rhetoric on the Chinese threat is essentially new to both of them, it was already aired over the weekend, before they got to the debate venue Monday night.

Sunak’s remarkably strong position on China now may appear to be a calculated attempt to move away from the perception he carried into the race as being a dove on Beijing. Indeed, the Chinese government tacitly approved of his candidacy last week, with state mouthpiece identifying him as the most pliable candidate.

Sprinting away from this, he told the audience: “We do need to recognise that China is a threat to our national security, our economic security… we need to stand up for our values, protect our country against threats”. Truss, who has also pushed for an economic deal with China and apparently wished to signal her distance from that, replied to Sunak that she was glad he had come around to her way of thinking.

Her comments were, if anything, more strident. Truss linked the West’s growing dependence on China for imports with the total disaster of Europe becoming dependent on Russian energy, rendering it unable to meaningfully stand up to Moscow when it invaded Ukraine. Truss said:

…we should not repeat the mistake we made with Russia. Of becoming strategically dependent on Russia. And we’re now facing the costs of that with energy. We can’t be strategically dependent on China… I don’t think it’s inevitable that China will be the biggest economy in the world, in fact we’ve been allowing that to happen…. we have to learn from the mistakes we made of Europe becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas. We cannot allow that to happen with China. Freedom is a price worth paying.

If the statement translated into policy in a Truss government, it would leave Britain with one of the strongest positions on China in the Western world, presumably working to bring back manufacturing from Chinese factories.

No decisive blows were landed in the bout and both candidates will likely come away feeling pleased. Sunak garnered the most applause of the night, with Truss waiting until very nearly the end to earn some for insisting she was plain speaking and will do what she says she will. Both candidates said they’d have the other in their governments and once the television cameras were off, even embraced each other in a hug before walking off stage.

The Conservative leadership competition final round vote will begin in early August and run until the start of September when the winner will be announced in time to take over the party from present leader Boris Johnson. Because the Conservatives presently have — by a considerable margin — the largest number of members in Parliament, the leader of the party also leads the country as Prime Minister, so that job will change over on September 5th as well.

But it is by no means a long-term job. Little more than two years after getting into the role, either Sunak or Truss will lead their party into the next United Kingdom general election. If they win and form another Conservative government, it will be a historic achievement: no party has ever won five elections back-to-back. If they lose, the country may face a so-called “coalition of chaos” of left-wing parties with interests including fundamental constitutional reform, breaking the country up into several smaller parts, and even going back into the European Union.