Rishi sunak

With most signs pointing to a Liz Truss triumph, team Sunak have been pulling out all the stops in a bid to make up lost ground. Tory membership ballots go out this week and although the rules technically allow members to vote a second time online if they change their mind, neither camp expects this to play a big factor. This means the next few days will be critical to the final result, announced on 5 September. And now that the ‘air war’ of TV debates and initial hustings has concluded, it means that the ‘ground game’ of face-to-face meetings with members matters all the more. Rishi Sunak has therefore

The Tory leadership races is a tale of two approaches: Liz Truss appears to be campaigning to win the party membership, but Rishi Sunak is is campaigning to win a general election. And its’ Truss’s approach that appears to be working, given YouGov’s survey of the Tory grassroots which shows her leading by 20 points. And now Mr S has more bad news for team Sunak: it’s not just the Tory membership turning against him but 2019 Tory voters too. For, according to a poll done by The Spectator by Redfield and Wilton, those who backed Boris Johnson at the last election now think Liz Truss is more likely to

Rishi Sunak took a major risk tonight, agreeing to a one-on-one interview with Andrew Neil on Channel 4 News. As Katy Balls says on our reaction podcast, more often than not politicians come crawling out of Neil’s interviews. At best, they hope to survive them. Tonight Sunak faced the most detailed grilling on his economy agenda since the leadership contest began. There was very limited time for Sunak’s personal stories or the rehearsed slogans that both candidates have taken to repeating on the campaign trail. It was instead a serious scrutiny of Sunak’s plan to stick with tax hikes and fiscal restraint. Neil’s main questions were about timing and priorities:

Tonight’s membership hustings in the Tory leadership contest showed both candidates – but particularly Liz Truss – relaxing and even enjoying themselves a fair bit. But they also underlined what the two of them feel they have to say in order to get a hearing with their selectorate.  Both had to commit to more grammar schools because this is a policy that – in spite of abundant evidence suggesting it does not improve social mobility or educational excellence in the way the two claimed tonight – the membership and indeed many Conservative MPs get misty-eyed about. Both will also have been very aware of quite how angry many members in the

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

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

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