Judging by the show of hands in the auditorium of the Perth Concert Hall tonight, both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak had a fair bit of work to do to win over Scottish Tories. Many put their hands up to say they hadn’t yet decided who to back when asked by the host Colin Mackay. Mind you, many of them then went on to boo Mackay for asking questions of both candidates that they found annoying. Normally when an audience boos a journalist in Scotland, it’s blamed on the SNP and that party’s dislike of scrutiny. Tonight, though, it was the Conservative party.
Neither candidate has said that much about their plan for Scotland prior to today’s hustings. Neither offered much in the way of hype beforehand either: Rishi Sunak revealed he wants the Permanent Secretary of the Scottish government to give evidence to Westminster select committees, while Truss announced MSPs would get full parliamentary privilege if she became Prime Minister. Both were aiming to show that they’d increase scrutiny of the Scottish government, underlining the frustration that Westminster politicians and Scottish Conservatives feel that Nicola Sturgeon’s party is able to get away with poor performance on domestic policies. Mind you, now might not be the time for the Tories to pontificate too loudly about the need for greater scrutiny of parties in power, given their favoured excuse of blaming the last Labour government has gone far past its sell-by-date, or even Truss’s preferred ‘sniff test’.
It’s noticeable that neither Truss nor Sunak spent much time praising the work of the 12 years of Conservative-led government that have preceded this contest, save for their own roles in it. Both had adapted their stump speech to a Scottish audience, though with the help of her supporter David Mundell, Truss had done so more adeptly. She joked that she had never been more popular than when she was in a bar in Edinburgh shortly after she agreed a deal removing tariffs on Scotch whisky. She described herself as a ‘child of the Union’ and received emotional applause after saying she would ‘never, ever let our family be split up’. Sunak’s offering was less tailored, but included the line that he would end the ‘devolve and forget’ mentality of the Westminster civil service, and criticising the SNP’s record on drug deaths.
Mackay was heckled when pressing Sunak on NHS spending (and pointing out that the NHS was a devolved matter in Scotland), when asking about Boris Johnson’s law-breaking and then again when giving Truss a hard time about whether it was really sustainable to say she would not allow a second independence referendum. Some members of the audience clearly felt he was going on too long, but heckling is rarely the sign of a party at ease with difficult questions. Truss has at past hustings enjoyed a spot of media bashing, but neither she nor Sunak encouraged the booing this evening. The former Chancellor briefly complained that Mackay needed to let him answer the question – which veteran watchers of this very long and repetitive contest may find amusing given he spent one of the earlier debates talking over Truss to the point her campaign called him ‘sexist’. Truss for her part softened her language about Nicola Sturgeon: she didn’t repeat that the First Minister was an ‘attention seeker’ who was best ‘ignored’, but instead continually criticised her for making independence her priority over and above tackling the cost of living.
Whoever wins – and judging by the reception in the hall tonight, Truss seems to have won over some undecideds – will have cost of living, not the Union, as their priority. Both candidates ruled out freezing energy bills for six months, which is the Labour proposal that’s currently setting the agenda. But neither offered any further details of their own big plans to match that. As with their big plans to save the UK, audience members were left largely in the dark. And they didn’t seem particularly keen for the candidates to be made any more uncomfortable about that tonight. The real discomfort will come once this contest finally ends in the autumn and there is nowhere for the new Prime Minister to hide.
Comments