Liz truss

It was the endorsement that they were all after. Ben Wallace, the most popular member of Boris Johnson’s cabinet has finally named his preferred candidate to be Britain’s next Prime Minister: Liz Truss. The current Defence Secretary, who has won plaudits for his handling of the Ukraine crisis, has given an interview to the Sun in which he extols Truss’s virtues. Wallace, who has worked closely with Truss to counter Russia’s aggression, told the newspaper that: What you see is what you get with Liz and that is what the public wants more than ever at this moment. She’s authentic. She’s honest. And she’s experienced. I’ve sat next to Liz

Talk about a tale of two campaigns. China has been one of the dominant themes this week in the Tory leadership race. Both candidates knocked lumps out of each other in BBC’s Monday debate, with the Foreign Secretary suggesting she could even ban TikTok. But tonight, the issue has reared its head again twice within a few hours. First, Rishi Sunak was left embarrassed by a leaked Treasury paper which suggested he was close to signing a deal with Beijing to ‘deepen trade links’ earlier this year. It boasted 47 pages of ‘policy outcomes’ for closer ties in 20 areas. They included inviting a huge Chinese sovereign wealth fund to

It’s six weeks to go until voting closes for the Tory leadership and polls suggest that Liz Truss is the firm favourite of the party grassroots – on a two-to-one ratio. Rishi Sunak has to do all he can to make up lost ground, something that has likely motivated the former Chancellor to accept a challenge from one of Britain’s most formidable interviewers. For it has today been announced that Andrew Neil, the longtime bête noire of politicians across the land, will grill Sunak this Friday night on prime-time Channel 4. The move is of course a gamble by Sunak: Neil gave him one of his tougher interviews last year

Liz Truss may have been a Remainer but she has learned the political lesson of the EU referendum in the way that her genuine Brexiter opponent has seemingly failed to do.  The point is that in today’s milieu, and especially with an electorate of 160,000 largely Brexit-supporting Tory members, power is with the insurgent. In pinning her colours to at least £30 billion of immediate tax cuts, against Sunak’s steady-as-we-go no-tax-cuts-till-prudent mantra, she has defined herself as the crusader against alleged stultifying Treasury orthodoxy. Every time a credible economist accuses her of risking financial ruin – by pushing up national debt and inflation – all she has to do is

Most Tories are focusing on the leadership race but for some there are other concerns. Take the five MPs who last year were sanctioned by the Chinese state. Tom Tugendhat, Neil O’Brien, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Nusrat Ghani and Tim Loughton were among a group of nine UK citizens to face sanctions in March for raising awareness of China’s human rights abuses against Ughur Muslim. Having banned this group from entering China, there are fears that Beijing will now try to seek revenge on them through other means too. One possible mechanism is by the exploitation of Interpol, the global police agency now feared to be acting in Chinese state

After the last televised leadership debate was cancelled when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak pulled out, we asked the remaining three candidates if they would come on SpectatorTV to face questions before Tory MPs’  final vote. (Since going to press the contenders will have been whittled down to two.) This is an edited transcript of their answers. Do you propose tax cuts? If so, how would you pay for them? PENNY MORDAUNT: On the current trajectory Rishi’s set us on, we are going to be one of the most uncompetitive nations in the OECD and that cannot be allowed to happen. We have to be able to compete. So there

I’m not sure that the Conservative party wants to win elections. Tom Tugendhat was knocked out of the leadership contest on Monday, and Liz Truss is now the bookies’ favourite to be the next Prime Minister. Any party that thinks the latter beats the former cannot say it is serious. There are several reasons for Conservatives to ignore me on this topic. First, I’m not a Conservative. Second, Tugendhat and I are friends. Third, I take a view of party politics that seems to be utterly out of fashion these days. That view is that politics works better when parties try to win the other side’s votes. When Conservatives pursue

Fights! Drama! Blue-on-blue attacks and not-so-subtle jibes! Last night’s Conservative leadership debate had it all. But perhaps it was the sheer level of exposure on Channel 4 and ITV which has convinced two of the Tory candidates not to repeat the experience. For this morning, both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have pulled out of the final leadership debate on Sky which was scheduled for tomorrow evening. The broadcaster has now cancelled the debate as a result. Both rivals were thought to have concerns about the prospect of knocking yet more lumps out of each other on national television. One source on Team Truss told the Huffington Post that: It

‘If you’re still watching this debate, well done,’ said Mordaunt, bizarrely, in her closing statement. ‘I wish tonight had been less about us and more about you.’ She obviously scripted that comment before she had any idea how the evening was going to pan out and her own contributions were certainly forgettable. But the others made for an interesting night. Tom Tugendhat quite rightly said the whole evening’s discussion – tax, defence etc. – was about the country. ‘We need to restore confidence in our government and in ourselves,’ he said. I’m not sure Britain needs its self-confidence restored: it’s the Tories who are having a collective breakdown. Rishi Sunak