What is driving the policy merry-go-round of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak?

The two candidates are engaged in a policy arms race ahead of ballots arriving on Tory members’ doormats, writes Ashley Cowburn

(PA)

Just 12 hours after touting a “war on Whitehall waste” alongside £11 billion worth of savings to fund her tax cuts, Liz Truss, the frontrunner to become Britain’s next prime minister, was forced to ditch the policy.

Rather than admitting the obvious pitfalls of a proposal to cut public sector pay outside London, the foreign secretary, a veteran of Boris Johnson’s government, insisted it had been “misrepresented”.

Rishi Sunak’s supporters, naturally, seized on the abrupt U-turn and made unflattering comparisons to Theresa May’s ill-fated social care reforms — the so-called “demential tax”.