Tory leadership election: five biggest battlegrounds for contenders

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is among the latest Tory MPs to throw their hat into the ring to replace Boris Johnson, taking the total number of contenders into double figures.

With the weekend papers filled with talk of rival Conservative leadership campaigns briefing against each other, private investigators being hired to dig into candidates’ financial arrangements and very public “mud-slinging”, the party is bracing for “what is likely to become the dirtiest leadership campaign in history”, said The Sunday Times.

“The temperature gauge will edge up another notch tonight when Conservative bosses announce the rules of engagement – but don’t expect bitter briefing against rivals, accusations and recriminations to be outlawed,” said Politico. “The Tories wouldn’t be able to handle a contest without gnawing lumps out of each other.”

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Behind the barbs and the insults are key policy differences and The Week looks at the issues that will define the contest and the future direction of the country once a winner emerges victorious.

Tax

Truss set out her stall by promising to immediately cut taxes if she was elected leader of the Tory party.

Launching her leadership bid in an article in The Telegraph, the foreign secretary said she “would start cutting taxes from day one to take immediate action to help people deal with the cost of living”. She also promised to reverse the National Insurance increase that came in during April, keep corporation tax “competitive”, and “put the Covid debt on a longer-term footing”.

According to Sky News, tax policies are “shaping up to be a deciding issue among the Tory leadership hopefuls”.

Two of the other frontrunners, former health secretaries Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid have said they will cut corporation tax, scrapping current plans to raise the tax from 19% to 25% and instead reduce it to 15%.

Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, meanwhile, has also pledged to lower taxes for individuals, families and business.

The promise to cut taxes is seen as a boon to both Tory MPs anxious over the expansion of the state under Boris Johnson and also the hundred thousand or so Tory members who will ultimately choose the next prime minister.

A leadership race defined by which candidate can promise to cut taxes the most and fastest could prove problematic for the current favourite, Rishi Sunak, however.

The former chancellor was reported to have stepped down last week “after a major bust-up” with Johnson last weekend, with Sunak “allegedly having refused point blank to cut corporation tax despite the PM’s demands”, reported Mail Online.

The site said that Sunak had “come under fire from Johnson loyalists, with Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg denouncing him as a ‘high tax chancellor’ who failed to curb inflation”.

Woke wars

On Sunday, The Telegraph reported an “extraordinary row” breaking out “between the two leading female candidates for prime minister as they both attempted to brandish their ‘anti-woke’ credentials”.

Attorney General Suella Braverman issued a statement condemning “an indulgence of extremism” in the gender debate and accusing leadership rival Penny Mordaunt of making her pregnancy “needlessly” stressful by allowing pro-trans activists to hijack maternity legislation.

Mordaunt posted a series of tweets setting out examples where she has challenged “trans orthodoxy” and advocated for a “science-based approach”.

In contrast, fellow leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat told Sophy Ridge on Sunday that it was time to “move on” from the debate around trans rights.

“It is one of those debates that demonstrates why we need to move on because it’s really easy to make division where we need unity,” he said. “We must never take away what it means to be a biological woman, but we must respect people who are in a different gender identity.”

The Independent reported that Grant Shapps, who is also running for leader, argued that people were far more interested in “bread and butter issues” like the cost of living than a debate about trans rights, arguing the UK does not “need to get caught up” in a culture war on the issue.

The i news site reported that Home Secretary Priti Patel “has not yet finally decided whether or not to stand for the leadership because she is worried that Mrs Braverman and Mrs [Kemi] Badenoch may have squeezed out her credentials as the ‘anti-woke’ candidate who is tough on immigration”.

Badenoch, a former equalities minister who received the surprise backing of Michael Gove over the weekend, made a big play of being opposed to socially liberal language and policies, blasting “zero-sum identity politics” as “shutting down debate” in a piece for The Times.

Brexit

While Brexit is not the defining issue it once was for Tory MPs and members, “the Conservatives are a long way from experiencing Brexit buyers’ remorse if the leadership race is anything to go by”, said Politico.

The Times reported that Patel was “edging closer” to announcing her leadership campaign, and that she will pitch herself as the only “authentic” Brexiteer who can win the leadership contest.

One MP supporting Patel branded Truss “a Remainer in Brexiteer’s clothing”, while another of Sunak’s supporters attacked Truss’s “ridiculous” attempt to appeal to the right, pointing out that Sunak had actually voted to leave the EU.

Even Tugendhat, who is seen as a moderate, made clear he would continue to push a controversial post-Brexit bill seeking to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Meanwhile Hunt, another moderate, has sought to tread a fine line, telling LBC that doubling down on an aggressive Brexit policy would be unnecessary, while at the same time vowing to make hardline Brexiteer Esther McVey his deputy if he were to become prime minister.

Given the Conservative Party membership remains “older, wealthier, whiter and more southern than the country as a whole”, said The Guardian, the contest may still become “a competition of who can wave the flag hardest while trumpeting Brexit’s success”.

The ‘Boris factor’

The elephant in the room in this year’s race is the outgoing prime minister and his complicated legacy. With the majority of leadership contenders having served in Johnson’s government, some at senior cabinet level, their association with him and role in his downfall could prove both a liability and asset.

In a not-so-subtle reference to the current incumbent of No. 10, most candidates have placed integrity and character at the centre of their campaign.

In what The Sun calls a “furious swipe” at Johnson, Mordaunt, who is still serving in the government as a trade minister, said: “Our leadership has to change. It needs to become a little less about the leader and a lot more about the ship.”

The i news site said that “MPs are divided over how best to preserve Boris Johnson’s Brexit legacy”, while “ministers who are close to Johnson have publicly denounced Sunak’s track record and warned that he will reverse the achievements of the government”.

Hunt, who is untainted by direct association with the current government, was perhaps the most direct, telling BBC One’s Sunday Morning show that Johnson “had done things that are not honest and that’s why we're in the situation we're in.”

Net zero

There are fears one of Johnson’s most important legacies – his commitment to achieving net zero by 2050 – could be ditched by the next Tory leader in order to gain the backing of climate-sceptic MPs.

The Guardian, which has ranked the green credentials of the leadership candidates, reported that “prominent backbenchers have been plotting for months to persuade any possible replacement for Johnson to ditch climate commitments in favour of expanding the use of fossil fuels”.

Braverman this weekend vowed to suspend net zero measures, saying: “In order to deal with the energy crisis we need to suspend the all-consuming desire to achieve net zero by 2050. If we keep it up, especially before businesses and families can adjust, our economy will end up with net zero growth.”

While she is not expected to make it through to the final round, it is a sign of how the need for Tory leadership hopefuls to appeal to the right of the party, combined with pressures brought on by the cost-of-living crisis, could spell trouble for future environmental commitments.

Environment minister Zac Goldsmith took a swing at Mark Spencer, the leader of the House of Commons who is backing Sunak, by comparing him to the far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

“Rishi Sunak has evidently agreed to make Mark Spencer the next DEFRA Secretary of State” he said. “Mark was the biggest blocker of measures to protect nature, biodiversity, animal welfare. He will be our very own little Bolsonaro. Grim news for nature.”