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”.

The former prime minister was forced to abandon the proposals during the 2017 general election while infamously protesting: “Nothing has changed, nothing has changed!”

But the former chancellor is also partial to a U-turn or two. After months of resisting pressure to cut VAT on energy bills — insisting it would benefit wealthy households — he announced the policy last week.

Under immense pressure to counter the tax cuts being offered by Ms Truss, the former chancellor also set out plans to slash income tax by the end of the 2020s — a policy dismissed as “jam tomorrow”.

Since making the final run-off in the Conservative leadership contest both the Sunak and Truss camps have been announcing policies on an almost daily basis, covering everything from taxes, to immigration, to the NHS, to housing, and of course, the so-called “culture wars”.

Just this morning, Mr Sunak announced plans to include the “vilification of the United Kingdom” into an official definition of extremism — but failed to set out details of said definition.

The merry-go-round of policies from the campaigns is in part to ensure their candidates are featured in newspapers and the rolling news channels on a daily basis with ideas (however poorly thought through they may appear) to catch the attention of the party faithful.

The two candidates are also engaged in a policy arms race ahead of ballots in the leadership contest arriving on members’ doormats from Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ).

Both Truss and Sunak are aware that many fee-paying members may decide to vote pretty soon after receiving their voting packs and according a recent YouGov poll, nine out of ten Tory members have now made up their minds on who to vote for.

The dozen hustings being held for members across the country and the televised debates are also critical. It is in these formats, alongside the Conservative-leaning newspapers, they have a major opportunity to flaunt their policy offering and pick up votes.

As the summer progresses and when members have all recieved their ballots, expected the dizzying pace at which billions of pounds are earmakred in policy annoucements to slow.

When the new prime minister takes office, the merry-go-round will re-start but the general public – rather than 160,000 Tory members –will be the target audience as the long campaign towards the country’s next general election begins.