The race to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister entered its final hours today, with Rishi Sunak’s camp still claiming it was “neck and neck” with Liz Truss in the Tory leadership election. Voting will close in the leadership contest at 5pm, before either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak is announced as the new Prime Minister next week.
It would be a massive shock if Sunak defeats Truss, with the Foreign Secretary assumed to be declared the winner on Monday. But Sunak supporter Kevin Hollinrake MP said the contest was far from “cut and dried” and cast doubt on the accuracy of polls showing Truss was the runaway frontrunner.
He told Sky News: “I’ve seen some of the polls and national polls. I think it’s quite hard for pollsters to determine who is a Conservative member and who is not because there’s not an open database. But I know who mine are. I polled my 700 members, 239 of them responded, so about a third of them responded, and Rishi got an eight-point lead.
“And I’ve seen similar kind of polls around different constituencies around the country. So I don’t think he’s cut and dried. I think he’s probably neck and neck.”
Meanwhile questions have been raised about a Liz Truss pledge to increase UK defence spending to three per cent of income by 2030, with figures showing the commitment would cost an extra £157 billion in spending. The research from the RUSI defence think tank said such a boost in defence expenditure, from about two per cent at present, would mark the biggest rise since the early 1950s.
Like her plans to cut tax and provide assistance to those in need during the winter energy crisis, no details on how the defence pledge would be funded have been issued by the Truss camp.
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