“Well, there’s no Boris in there.” John Brougthon is not exactly thrilled when he walks out of the Darlington Hippodrome one summer evening. With several hundred other members of the Conservative party, the 71-year-old entrepreneur has seen the two candidates for his party’s leadership, and thus the premiership, at work. “Rishi Sunak is too slick for me, Liz Truss is okay,” Broughton analyzes the candidates, “but the faction should never have sent Johnson away. Then this circus wouldn’t have been necessary at all.’
As the UK gears up for priceless pints, general strikes and cold living rooms, the ruling party has organized a kind of traveling circus. Sunak and Truss have so-called hustings meetings where party members are given the opportunity to ask questions. On Monday, the ruling party will announce whether its 160,000 members are ‘Ready for Rishi’ or whether they would rather see ‘Liz for Leader’, the self-proclaimed freedom fighter.
In the Hippodrome, where a show about the ancient comedian Spike Milligan will soon be on, Sunak storms the stage energetically and enthusiastically. Expensive tailor-made suit, broad smile, smooth chat. It’s a home game for him, because as Chancellor of the Exchequer he has set up a branch of the department in this northern English city, as part of the equalization between the rich south and the poorer north. If he wins the battle, there will also be a ‘Downing Street campus’, the 42-year-old politician jokingly promises.
Paternalistically, he promises to prudently watch over public finances while helping those in need due to the energy crisis. He casually reminds his audience that he voted for Brexit in 2016, unlike his opponent. It generates applause, including from 17-year-old Edmund Smith, who is not yet allowed to vote in the regular elections, but is now allowed to put a cross on a ballot. “Rishi is pragmatic, he has charisma and doesn’t promise castles in the air,” explains the student from Durham.
life stories
Sunak and Truss, both Oxford alumnus, have spent weeks making statements that have exposed the soul of conservative England. Sunak wants the number grammar schools (statesathenea), fine people who fail to attend medical appointments £10, and go to war against the ‘leftie woke culture’.
As a ‘reborn Brexiteer’, Truss promises to protect Brexit from remainers and lower taxes. Like Thatcher, her heroine, she posed on the Isle of Wight in front of the largest Union Jack in the world.
The two, who bickered over tax policy in the Johnson cabinet, drew from their life stories. Sunak, a privately trained son of a doctor and a pharmacist, presents himself as the scion of a successful immigrant family. In the area of climate change, he likes to refer to his concerns about the future of his two daughters. Truss, the rebellious daughter of a professor and nurse, often talks about disappointing experiences at a state school, much to the dismay of her left-wing parents.
Character
What is paramount in this struggle, however, is not content or identity, but character. Sunak notices this when a middle-aged man stands up. “Are you familiar with the quote that he who wields the dagger never inherits the throne?” It is a painful moment, this reference to the coup against Johnson, which got underway in early July after Sunak announced his resignation. Sunak is fighting back, saying that dozens of other members of the government had also resigned and that apart from that, he values integrity.
The idea that he is a Judas plays into the fact that Truss is the favorite from the start. Among the party members, especially those in northern England, Johnson still enjoys considerable popularity. According to a poll, he would get 63 percent of the vote in a fight against Truss and as much as 68 percent in a fight against Sunak. Within the supporters there is therefore grumbling, not only about the dismissal of the controversial prime minister, but also about the lack of alternative. The fact that the party board also asks 5 pounds to attend a husting is salt in the wound.
“Truss has gone to great lengths not to offend members angry about Johnson’s departure,” said political scientist Tim Bale, author of a reference work on Tories history, “and vows to continue his Brexit policy. ‘ However, it is not love at first sight. “We support Truss, but we would have preferred to have seen Kemi Badenoch,” says retired Anne Westgard, who came from Newcastle with her son Stephen, a child psychiatrist. “He was young and fresh, a new face.”
Representative of the elite
When asked about Sunak, the terms slick, slick and established order are always used. Although he is a Brexiteer, he is seen as a representative of the elite. ‘Is it true that you are richer than the Queen?’ a party member asks during the debate in Darlington. Sunak has made millions in the City and his Indian wife is a billionaire daughter. Speaking about his love for Californian culture during another husting is seen as the moment that this Star Warsfan definitively lost the intended premiership.
“Truss’ strong point is that she’s not Sunak,” says Bale. “Where he comes across as smooth and elitist, she is apparently ‘authentic’ and provincial.” In Darlington, a Labor Red Wall town blown down by Johnson in the 2019 election, ‘Queen Liz’ is trying to captivate party members by saying she’s ‘not the smoothest person on the podium’. The two pretenders regularly get to grips with each other, but the loudest applause is when Boris Johnson’s blond hair comes into view in the introductory video.