Friday night saw the first televised debate among the remaining five Tory leadership contenders, including
former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, ex-Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat.
Garnett recalled that “not a single member of the audience raised a hand” when asked if they trusted British politicians during the debate that was broadcast by Channel 4.
Dwelling on the performance of the candidates, Garnett said that frontrunner Rishi Sunak “had difficult questions to answer about his association with [outgoing Prime Minister Boris] Johnson, as well as recent economic decisions, but appeared confident and relaxed.”
Sunak “received the most votes [101] from MPs in the last round of the leadership contest, and nothing he said in the debate should endanger that position. The other two contenders likely to proceed to the final round of voting (decided by ordinary party members) are
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and the Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt,” the Lancaster University professor argued.
Sunak said during the debate that he told Johnson “enough is enough” before resigning earlier this month, and remained evasive when asked if BoJo was honest, in an apparent nod to his attitude towards the so-called “Partygate” row related to No 10 parties held amid COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. The ex-Chancellor also clashed with Truss over taxation, insisting that cutting taxes would push up inflation and worsen the problem. “Borrowing your way out of inflation isn’t a plan, it’s a fairy tale,” the former chancellor told her.
Echoing Garnett was Alistair Jones, associate professor of politics at De Montfort University in the UK, who told Sputnik that Sunak and Mordaunt would be “the two likely candidates” to prevail in the race before the winner is finally announced on 5 September.
On the Friday debate, he said that “there were clear winners and there were clear losers”, describing Truss as the person who “performed the worst of the five candidates”.
He praised Sunak, who the professor said “grew into the whole performance” and who “started off very weak, especially on the issue of trust, but grew into it through looking at the economy, looking at tax cuts."
Referring to the moment when each candidate “got to speak for 45 seconds in the final summing up” of the debate, Jones insisted that Sunak “probably was the strongest equal” with Tugendhat, although the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee was “very forceful but rather broad brush.”
The race to become Conservative Party leader was whittled down to five candidates after a second round of votes on Thursday, when Attorney General Suella Braverman was knocked out of the contest.
More rounds of votes are due to be held next week, with the lowest scoring candidate being knocked out, until the race is cut down to two finalists. The final two contenders will then face a runoff vote by about 180,000 Conservative Party members across the country before a winner is announced on September 5.