London –
Candidates to replace Boris Johnson as Britain’s prime minister are sprinkling promises of tax cuts to their Conservative Party constituency, as party officials prepare on Monday to rapidly narrow the crowded field of nearly a dozen candidates.
Little-known junior minister Rehman Chishti became the 11th candidate to declare he wants to succeed Johnson, who resigned as Conservative leader on Thursday amid a party revolt sparked by months of ethics scandals. Other contenders include Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Treasury chief Nadhim Zahawi, former health secretaries Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt, and supporting lawmakers Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch.
The new leader will be chosen in a two-stage election, in which the 358 Conservative lawmakers narrow the race down to two candidates through a series of elimination votes. The final pair will be put to a postal vote by party members across the country. Under Britain’s parliamentary system, the new leader will automatically become prime minister without the need for a general election.
The party’s 1922 Committee, which organizes leadership contests, will elect a new executive on Monday, who will set the rules for the contest. The committee wants to complete the parliamentary stage of the election before lawmakers take a summer break on July 21. That would mean a summer second round with a new leader in place by the time the House of Commons returns on September 5.
A key committee decision will be how many nominations a candidate will need to make it to the first ballot. In the last race for the lead in 2019, it was eight, but the threshold could be 20 or more this time, a move that could eliminate some contenders outright.
Many Conservatives are wary of leaving Johnson in office for long, worried that a lame leader is the last thing Britain needs with the war in Ukraine, food and energy price rises pushing inflation to levels not seen in decades and growing labor unrest. Some also worry that Johnson, brought down by scandals over money, rule-breaking and his handling of sexual misconduct allegations against lawmakers, could do harm even as caretaker prime minister.
In the open leadership contest, the contenders are scrambling to differentiate themselves from the perceived leader, former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, who already has the backing of more than three dozen lawmakers.
Many have repudiated the tax increases Sunak introduced to shore up UK finances battered by the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit: a 1.25 per cent income tax increase for millions of workers and an increase in the tax of companies next year from 19 percent to 25 percent. . Most candidates say they will rule out one or both.
“I want to cut all taxes,” said Hunt, who has pledged to cut corporate income tax to 15 percent. Truss said he would start cutting taxes “from day one,” and Tugendhat said he would “cut taxes on all aspects of society.”
Sunak, whose resignation on Tuesday helped unseat Johnson, has cast himself as the candidate of fiscal probity and warned his rivals not to tell the public “comforting fairy tales.”
All the candidates are trying to distance themselves from the mire of drift, disorganization and rule-breaking that sank Johnson, though most of them have served in his administration, and some still do.
They seek to appeal to an electorate of some 180,000 Conservative members that, in many ways, does not represent the country as a whole: it is older, whiter and richer, and much more in favor of Brexit, the country’s exit from the Union. European.
So far, neither has given up on Johnson’s most controversial policies: legislation to rip up parts of his Brexit deal with the EU and a plan to send some asylum seekers arriving in Britain to Rwanda that is being challenged in court. .
The party’s battle has already turned contentious, with rivals criticizing Sunak’s record as finance minister, and Zahawi, the current treasury chief, rejecting claims that he is under investigation over his tax affairs.
Zahawi said he was being “slandered” and said he was not aware of any investigation by the tax office or other agencies.
Tony Travers, a government professor at the London School of Economics, said “it would be hard to overstate how ugly” the race already is, with teams of candidates reporting and leaking information about each other to the media.
“It really is a war of all against all, and it will get worse,” he said.
Oddsmen say Sunak is likely to be one of the last two contenders, but the race is highly unpredictable. Truss and Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt have strong support, while Tugendhat, a former centre-left party soldier, and right-wing rising star Badenoch have secured the support of big names and could surprise smaller rivals. experienced.
Johnson clung to power for months despite accusations that he was too close to party donors, shielded supporters from allegations of intimidation and corruption, and misled Parliament about party government offices. who violated the COVID-19 confinement rules.
Police fined him for attending one of the parties, but he survived a no-confidence motion in Parliament last month, despite the fact that 41 percent of Conservative lawmakers tried to unseat him.
But Johnson was hit by one more scandal: this one involved the appointment of a politician who had been accused of sexual misconduct.
Johnson, still in office if not in power, said he did not plan to endorse a candidate.
“I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s chances by offering my support,” he said.