As the competition to reach position No. 10 heats up, Liz Truss has struck out at Rishi Sunak's record on taxes.
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| [Liz Truss] |
Penny Mordaunt was eliminated from contention for the position of British prime minister yesterday afternoon when she was voted out of the running by about 180,000 members of the Conservative Party.
The competition was won by Sunak with 137 votes, followed by Truss with 113 votes.
However, the current foreign secretary is the frontrunner to succeed Boris Johnson when the winner is revealed on September 5. According to the polls, Sunak is unlikely to prevail over any of his competitors.
The tensions between the two are rising, and Truss lashed out at her rival's record in his previous role as Chancellor of the Exchequer in a statement she released last night.
Her statements were made in response to Sunak's assertion that he was the only candidate who had a chance of defeating Labour in an election.
Truss said in an article he wrote for the Daily Mail that the government has been "moving in the wrong way on tax," and that the current tax load is the largest it has been in seven decades.
Mr. Sunak was in charge of the government's tax record up to his resignation, which was the event that ultimately led to Mr. Johnson's removal from office.
In addition to this, Truss promised to call for an emergency budget meeting in order to push through rapid tax cuts in reaction to the rising cost of living.
In her writing, she said that "we cannot have business-as-usual managerialism on the economy."
"I'm the tax-cutting candidate who will aid squeezed households by reversing April's national insurance hike and postponing the green levy on energy bills," the candidate claimed. "I'm the one who will help lower taxes."
I will seek to put in an emergency budget so that we can get started on this as soon as possible, and I will announce a spending review so that we can identify ways to reduce wasteful expenditure by the government.
Additionally, Truss said that she will engage the Left in the so-called "culture wars" and "stand up to folks who speak down our nation."
The campaign for the 46-year-old candidate's leadership position got off to a rocky start yesterday with a tweet that was released after the results of the vote were tallied.
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said that she was "ready to hit the ground running from day one."
People were eager to point out that she had left off the word "running" in her usage of the common term, and they did so in a very pointed manner.
The tweet was quickly corrected, and an updated version was uploaded, but not before a screenshot of the original was taken.
In the meanwhile, Rishi Sunak has made a video message in which he assures his followers, "I won't let you down."
The former chancellor said: ‘I’ll work as hard as I can to get our message out to the country.
Restoring trust, revitalizing the economy, and bringing our nation back together are all imperatives.
"I'm convinced that we can achieve that, and we've got a very vital positive message to carry out to all of our members today - most importantly, who is the best person to defeat Keir Starmer and the Labour Party at the next election? "
"I feel that I am the only one who is capable of doing it," he said.
Source: METRO