The race has begun between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to become Prime Minister after Penny Mordaunt was eliminated from the contest on Wednesday. Our fate is now in the hands of some 160,000 Tory Party members who will elect the winner.   

 We have a hot summer of heated hustings ahead, with 45 days to go until the new leader is announced. But with Parliament in recess, WTWN will be taking a short break for a few weeks – see you in September! 

Liz Truss

has become the bookies’ (pork) market favourite to be the next Prime Minister, so it’s difficult to deny that she is ‘flying high’ this week.

Since the race began, Truss has declined broadcast interviews, apart from the TV debates, focusing on honing her message to MPs who were the only audience for getting onto the final two. She has managed to convince “red wall” MPs that despite her past as a Remainer, she is committed to the Brexit cause, evident through trade deals signed during her time as International Trade Secretary.

The race to the final two was unpredictable, but Truss has appealed to the right wing of her party through her libertarianism, trumpeting the value of free markets, backing immediate tax cuts and repeatedly railing against the “nanny state”.

And it’s not only the bookies that have placed her as favourite, polling of party members by YouGov suggests she’ll soundly defeat her opponent in the runoff vote among the party grassroots. The contest isn’t only between 2 personalities, but also between two contrasting economic visions – we will soon discover if the Tory grassroots accept the need for Rishi’s fiscal conservatism or if their heads are turned by Liz’s tax cuts now.

Rishi Sunak

may have got support from 137 MPs, compared with 113 for Liz Truss, but the former Goldman Sachs analyst, pandemic chancellor and self-described coke-addict is the bookies’ second favourite to become the next PM.

Unlike his opponent, Sunak has been finding himself having to defend his record in Government, after he pledged to do “whatever it takes” to help people through the pandemic in the spring of 2020 – and unveiled support worth £350bn. He clearly feels he has a point to prove, after critics within the party suggested his tax rises as chancellor made him a socialist. In response, Sunak describes himself as a “Thatcherite” four times in three sentences in an article in The Telegraph published on Wednesday and branded Truss as the “socialist” for her unfunded economic plans.

This has been a grubby contest so far and it will only get worse over the summer. One of Sunak or Truss will emerge as Prime Minister in September, but they risk collectively ripping the Conservative party apart in the process with one of them left with the unenviable task of picking up the pieces, dealing with the cost-of-living crisis and preparing for a general election in just two years’ time. The other defeated candidates may well end up seeing this contest as a good one to have lost.