After a weekend of rancorous briefings against each other, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak faced each other during an hour-long live TV debate from Stoke-on-Trent. Here are five key takeaways, on a night where Sunak seemed as assured as ever, but Truss did not do anything to significantly harm her chances. Indeed, one of the few rounds of applause from the audience came when she simply said she was not the slickest performer. The gloves stayed off The former Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis had decried the TV debate format as too aggressive, and the former Tory chair Francis Maude warned both candidates against trashing the brand, but there was no love lost. Truss and Sunak constantly interrupted each other on tax, clashed over who had supported “Project Fear”, and it was difficult to believe that just three weeks ago they were ministerial colleagues in the same government under Boris Johnson. At the end they both said they could work together in government again, but nobody believed it.
Sunak is trying to make tax-and-spend a moral issue The former chancellor talked about Truss wanting to put Covid debt on the never-never, and asked whether it was “moral” to leave debt to be paid off by children and grandchildren, bringing out the idea that the country has a credit card and saying the policy was un-Conservative. Truss hit back by saying again that Covid was a once-in-a-century event, and that no other major economy was trying to raise tax to pay off the debt so fast. Polling suggests she has the lead with the Tory membership, and it is very possible her “feel” about how to repay debt will win their hearts over Sunak’s harder-nosed fiscal approach. The backstory is a big thing The BBC studio audience was made up of people who voted Conservative in a so-called red wall seat in 2019, and the audience wanted to know what levelling up meant for them locally. The candidates reiterated their commitment to the project, but also spent a lot of time detailing their upbringings, revealing their keenness to burnish their “salt of the earth” credentials. Sunak helping his mother’s business and Truss and her comprehensive school education inevitably got mentioned. China is an ongoing battleground Truss trumpeted her tough stance on China, and said we should not make the same mistake we made with Russia. Sunak pointed out that Truss once said we were entering a “golden age” with China. The open question from the BBC’s economic editor was: are you really committed to cracking down on our biggest individual import partner? Neither candidate really had the answer to that hard question. Ukraine featured too. Both were proud of their record in government of supporting Ukraine. Both ruled out the Royal Navy actively engaging in the Black Sea. The environment finally got a mention The two candidates were asked what they thought the three most important things were that people could do for the environment. Sunak said his children were the experts, and cited energy efficiency, recycling and a faith in British innovation to solve problems. Truss, who often tries to smudge her Liberal Democrat past, said she was “a teenage eco-warrior before it was fashionable”.