Over the next few weeks, the UK’s Conservative Party members will choose their next leader and the country’s next prime minister after the field was yesterday reduced to two contestants: Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
The person who wins the final vote among party members in September will likely lead the Tories into the next election in two years’ time.
The campaign of the leadership contestants has had an air of detachment from reality, with candidates resorting to evasion, magical thinking, black operations and mud-slinging. A Sky News TV Conservative leadership debate was cancelled as Conservative MPs were said to be concerned about the damage the discussions were doing to the party’s image by exposing disagreements and splits.
The battle for No. 10 Downing Street has, so far, been disappointing. Many Britons still look forward to the UK thriving after Brexit and now to dealing successfully with the threats of spiralling energy and food costs. High persistent inflation is causing misery to households who despair about the lack of serious political debate on how the country needs to address its current social and economic challenges.
All candidates played the nostalgia card claiming they are loyal to Margaret Thatcher’s political legacy. Yet, today the UK’s economic challenges are very different from those when Thatcher was prime minister. For instance, the UK’s gross domestic product per head is 11 per cent behind that of Germany. This is worse than the six per cent gap before the financial crisis a decade ago.
UK voters, including many who traditionally supported the Labour Party, endorsed Boris Johnson in 2019 due to the Conservatives’ promises of improvement in public services by investing more money for the country’s schools, hospitals and the police.
Rather than revamping this successful electoral formula that Johnson never implemented, the candidates have been competing on a single issue – how to cut taxes. They seem to believe the Johnson myth that unfunded tax cuts pay for themselves. This is a detachment from reality. Rishi Sunak has been the only candidate showing some realism regarding fiscal policy.
Put simply, the importance of pragmatism and sound economic management have hardly featured in the leadership debate. One cannot be credible by making irresponsible and unachievable promises to cut taxes while investing more in public services.
Conservative Party members who ultimately decide who becomes leader are said to be more conservative than the parliamentary party. This political reality may be behind the leadership candidates’ commitment to driving Brexit with more determination and breaking relations with the EU. The UK needs to work with the EU to normalise trade relations and scientific collaboration threatened by the Northern Ireland row.
The Conservative Party has always prided itself as a broad political church where low-tax libertarians and high-spending interventionists could co-exist as they all have the country’s interest at heart. Under Johnson, the engines of the state have generally ground to a halt, with many ordinary people complaining about the falling public service standards. Today, ordinary people in the UK, as in all other democracies, want their leaders to talk about the national health service, the quality of education, the rising cost of living and the enforcement of law and order.
Whoever wins the battle for No. 10 Downing Street and becomes prime minister in a few weeks’ time must take Britons in their confidence and define realistic plans on how to deal with sluggish economic growth, tame escalating inflation and deliver on the promises made in the Brexit campaign.