Conservatives jostle in crowded, testy leadership race

LONDON (AP):

Candidates to replace Boris Johnson as Britain’s prime minister are scattering tax-cutting promises to their Conservative Party electorate, as party officials prepare Monday to quickly narrow the crowded field of almost a dozen candidates.

Little-known junior minister Rehman Chishti became the 11th candidate to declare he wants to succeed Johnson, who quit as Conservative leader on Thursday amid a party revolt triggered 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 backbench lawmakers Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch.

The new leader will be chosen in a two-stage election, in which the 358 Conservative lawmakers reduce the race to two candidates through a series of elimination votes. The final pair will be put to a postal ballot of 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 runs leadership contests, is set to elect a new executive on Monday, which will lay out rules for the contest. The committee wants to complete the parliamentary stage of the election before lawmakers break for the summer 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.

One key decision by the committee will be how many nominations a candidate will need to get on to the first ballot. At the last leadership contest in 2019 it was eight, but the threshold could be 20 or more this time – a move that could eliminate some contenders immediately.

CONCERNS

Many Conservatives are wary of leaving Johnson in office for too long, concerned a lame-duck leader is the last thing Britain needs with war raging in Ukraine, food and energy price increases driving inflation to levels not seen in decades, and growing labour unrest. Some also worry Johnson – brought down by scandals over money, rule-breaking and his handling of sexual misconduct allegations against lawmakers – could do mischief even as a caretaker prime minister.

In the wide-open leadership contest, contenders are striving to set themselves apart from the perceived front-runner, former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, who already has the backing of more than three dozen lawmakers.

Many have repudiated tax increases Sunak introduced to shore up UK finances battered by the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit – a 1.25-per-cent income-tax rise for millions of workers, and an increase in corporation tax next year from 19 per cent to 25 per cent. Most candidates say they will scrap one or both.

“I want to cut all taxes,” said Hunt, who pledged to slash corporation tax to 15 per cent. Truss said she would start slashing taxes “from day one”, and Tugendhat said he would “lower taxes across every aspect of society”.

Sunak, whose resignation on Tuesday helped topple Johnson, has cast himself as the candidate of fiscal probity, and warned rivals not to tell the public “comforting fairytales”.

All the candidates are trying to distance themselves from the mire of drift, disorganisation and rule-breaking that sank Johnson – though most of them have served in his government, and some still do.