British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss entered the race to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister on Monday, taking the number of candidates in an increasingly bitter and unpredictable contest to 11.
Truss, who has held ministerial jobs in a number of government departments including trade, justice and the treasury, said she would slash taxes and maintain a tough line against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Johnson was forced out last Thursday after his government imploded over a series of scandals.
The contest is for the leadership of the ruling Conservative Party, with the winner then becoming prime minister. The aim is to find a successor by September.
“I will lead a government committed to core Conservative principles: low taxes, a firm grip on spending, driving growth in the economy, and giving people the opportunity to achieve anything they want to achieve,” she said in a campaign video.
The race followed one of the most remarkable periods in modern British political history, when more than 50 government ministers quit, denouncing Johnson’s character, integrity and inability to tell the truth.
With many lawmakers unhappy with the disgraced Johnson remaining in office until a successor is found, the party is likely to accelerate the election process. It could insist that candidates have the backing of around 30 lawmakers to enter the process, before voting begins this week to whittle the number down to two.
The issue of tax cuts was fast becoming the central battle in the race with nearly all of the candidates promising to cut business or personal taxes.
Setting out her pitch to the Conservative Party’s 200,000 members who will decide the outcome of the contest, Truss said she would reverse the recent rise in National Insurance contributions and signalled a cut to corporation tax.
Fellow contenders Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid have both pledged to cut corporation tax, while the former defence minister Penny Mordaunt has promised to cut fuel duty.
Former finance minister Rishi Sunak is the early front runner, but he is the only candidate who has played down the prospect of imminent tax cuts, saying the adoption of “comforting fairy tales” would leave future generations worse off.
“Someone has to grip this moment,” he said in his launch video.
This has prompted his rivals to attack his economic record after the tax burden rose to the highest level since the 1950s. One lawmaker confirmed that a dossier criticising Sunak’s record had been circulating on lawmaker WhatsApp groups.
