party<\/a> leader. Postal ballots started arrived Monday at the homes of about 180,000 party members who will decide the winner. The new leader will be announced Sept. 5 and will automatically become prime minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSunak said his critics were \u201clooking at the last few months of the government with slightly rose-tinted glasses.\u201d He said \u201cthe government found itself on the wrong side of a very serious ethical issue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnson led the Conservatives to a commanding parliamentary majority in 2019, but he has been plagued by scandals since then, and was fined by police over parties that broke COVID-19 lockdown rules. He clung to power for months but finally quit on July 7 after one scandal too many \u2014 appointing a politician accused of sexual misconduct \u2014 drove his ministers to resign en masse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunak is running as an experienced minster who can guide the country through the economic turbulence caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. He was the favorite candidate among Tory lawmakers who whittled down the field of candidates from an initial 11 contenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Truss now appears to have more momentum and has won backing from several high-profile lawmakers and Cabinet ministers with her pledges to slash taxes and government bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunak\u2019s replacement as finance minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said he was backing Truss because she offered a \u201cbooster\u201d economic approach compared to \u201cdoomster\u201d Sunak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunak accuses Truss of peddling unrealistic promises, especially on the economy. Truss says she will cut taxes immediately to ease the cost-of-living crisis, funding it through borrowing. Sunak argues it is vital to get inflation under control first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on Monday he pledged a big income tax cut in the next few years, in what critics said was a U-turn forced by pressure from Truss\u2019s campaign. Sunak said he would cut the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 16% by 2029.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want to make sure that we can pay for it, I want to make sure that we can do it alongside growing the economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABC News: Rishi Sunak, one of the two contenders to replace British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on Monday defended his decision to quit the government and help end Johnson\u2019s scandal-tarnished leadership. Allies of Johnson accuse Sunak of treachery for stepping down as U.K. Treasury chief last month as the government floundered amid ethics scandals, with a resignation letter, saying \u201cwe cannot continue like this.\u201d More than 50 government ministers went on to quit, leaving Johnson no choice but to resign as Conservative Party leader. Polls of Conservative members put Foreign Secretary Liz Truss ahead of Sunak in the contest to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26095,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26093\/revisions\/26095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}