Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss will dispute the succession of Boris Johnson as leader of the British Conservatives… – ABC.es

The race to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is drawing to a close. After coming first in all five rounds of voting by Conservative Party MPs, former British finance minister Rishi Sunak will face Britain’s foreign minister Liz Truss to succeed still-prime minister Boris Johnson at the helm. of the Conservatives, as announced on Wednesday by Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee. The winner will be decided by a vote among the more than 200,000 members of the political formation and will be announced on September 5. The Conservative deputies voted among the numerous applicants in successive elimination rounds, until Wednesday with only two. Truss thus closed the narrow advantage that separated him from Penny Mordaunt, the favorite of the voters according to the polls, securing a place in the second round by 113 votes against 105. Now, he will face Sunak, who led the final vote. with 137 of the 357 votes. Both candidates have been fighting these days to secure the backing of Tory members who had supported Kemi Badenoch, who was eliminated in the previous round. Favorite of the ‘Tories’ Sunak received millions of applause for his management of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom. However, his popularity declined as the economic crisis in the UK grew. By then, his popularity had already hit rock bottom when he was fined after the ‘partygate’ scandal and after it was discovered that his wife did not have a tax domicile in Great Britain. Most Conservatives are enthusiastic about his pro-Brexit views, though they also suspect he deliberately precipitated Johnson’s downfall by resigning as finance minister on July 5. In addition, some Conservative MPs fear that her wealthy background could become an easy target for criticism from the Labor Party in the upcoming 2024 general election. Quite the contrary to the recently eliminated Penny Mordaunt, her aloof image is contributing to her low popularity levels with voters – polls suggest he will lose the final round – although his experience in managing the British economy could help turn things around. She has repeatedly clashed with Truss over economic policy during the political campaign. He even called the tax cuts promised by the foreign minister a “fairy tale.” Unlike his rivals, he portrays himself as someone who would not cut taxes until inflation is under control: “I don’t think the most responsible thing to do right now is to go on a wave of bad loans and more debt,” he took Truss to task last week in the first televised Conservative leadership debate on ‘Channel 4’. Fast-forward race The Foreign Secretary’s campaign gained momentum in the end, bouncing back after a slow start and knocking out Trade Secretary Penny Mordaunt. Her passionate stance on post-Brexit reforms and relief schemes for low-income people worked to her advantage in winning the support of her party colleagues. “It is time to be bold, not to apply a business-as-usual approach,” she said Tuesday, clearly referring to Sunak, who said she would not cut taxes immediately. Last year, Truss became the UK’s second female foreign minister in its entire history. In a short time, she has held a wide variety of positions and has dealt with high-profile domestic and international affairs. As foreign minister, she sought to resolve the thorny issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol, scrapping parts of a post-Brexit EU-UK deal, a move the EU fiercely criticized. Now, she is facing the around 200,000 ‘tories’, whom she will have to win over to become the next leader of the British Conservative Party and the new prime minister on September 5.