Liz Truss: The challenge of succeeding Boris Johnson | Opinion

The defenestration of Boris Johnson, whose multiple scandals have distracted the country’s attention for months, has suddenly revealed the urgencies of the Conservative Party. Two rivals face each other in the primaries of the formation. The winner, who will be announced on September 5, will immediately occupy the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Rishi Sunak, former Minister of the Economy, and Foreign Minister Liz Truss will fight during the first weeks of August to obtain the support of the majority of the 200,000 affiliates with the right to vote. Polls indicate that Truss starts as the clear favorite among a membership that is mostly older, white, with more men than women, middle class and deeply eurosceptic. But this time the challenge is not to bring Brexit to fruition, which is why militants put their trust in Johnson a year ago. The immediate threats that the next occupant of Downing Street will have to face will be runaway inflation, which in June reached 8.2%, public debt that already accounts for 96.1% of GDP, and a recession on the horizon .

What is urgent is the economy, but everything suggests that the militants tories they will be carried away by the personal quarrels that Johnson’s fall has unleashed. Sunak, the candidate most clearly prepared to face the immediate challenge, provokes a clear rejection among all those resentful of the way in which the career of the still prime minister was ended. It is paradoxical that a politician with obvious neoliberal convictions, and a defender of Brexit from the first minute, represents for many militants the least attractive of the options. His refusal to lower taxes until inflation and public finances are controlled demonstrates, according to his rivals, how far Sunak is from the true spirit of the Conservative Party.

In any case, hard times are ahead for the British. Both he and Truss claim heirs to the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, but while the former minister recalls that the Iron Lady always defended the need to balance the accounts before beginning to distribute tax benefits, his opponent has already promised tax cuts for a higher value to 35,000 million euros. Thatcher’s true heir would be Sunak, facing a Truss that is more reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, and his doctrine that a drastic tax cut, a reduction in public spending and a deregulation of the markets would suffice to ensure growth. To combat inflation, the recipe would be a rigid monetary policy, which the candidate advocates, ignoring the independence of a Bank of England that has already made clear her option for a gradual rise in rates.