In his "Bio of Churchill", Andrew Roberts used this impressive sentence to lay the best foundation for the entry of the greatest prime minister in British history to No. 10 Downing Street.

Author丨Shi Yan

Editor丨Hejia

Picture Source丨Xinhua News Agency

"People who dance with destiny will not wait for others to arrange for appearance. They feel that they will appear when they should."

In his "Bio of Churchill", Andrew Roberts used this impressive sentence to lay the best foundation for the greatest prime minister in British history to take over No. 10 Downing Street.

, the hottest July on record in the UK, wanted to be the " Churchill second", Johnson was forced to retreat by nearly 60 government officials. After more than two weeks of voting, 358 Conservative MPs in the British House of Commons selected the two final candidates for the new owner of Downing Street for 67 million British people - 42-year-old former Indian wealth minister Rishi Sunak and 47-year-old three-dynasty veteran and foreign minister Truss (Liz Truss).

They stood out from a total of 11 candidates who hope to replace Johnson and have been busy with fierce debates since last Wednesday, proving that themselves, not the other party, are the best candidates to run the country. On August 5, votes sent to Conservative Party members will be sent, accounting for only 0.3% of the total British voters, and they will decide who is the winner and the results will be announced on September 5.

International Monetary Fund said the UK will be the slowest growing country in the G7 next year, with economic growth falling to 0.5% in 2023, well below the 1.2% forecast in April. Of course, this is not a dilemma that the UK has to face alone, and IMF warns the world that "may soon be crumbling on the brink of the global economic recession."

Faced with a heavy cost of living crisis and the inability to keep up with the wage increase of inflation, on July 27, the two major railway unions that failed to negotiate with the capital began a new round of strikes, with only about one-fifth of the train lines maintaining services, which may affect the Birmingham Commonwealth Games starting on the 28th, and more strikes will occur next month.

Two major focus: the cost of living crisis and when to cut taxes

The second TV debate live broadcast on the evening of July 26 was halfway through, but it was dramatically interrupted.

The live broadcast of TV itself is also dramatic. The two pre-planned live broadcast hosts are Harry Cole, political editor of " Sun " and Kate McCann, political editor of Talk TV. Unexpectedly, Cole tested positive for the new crown before the live broadcast that day and was forced to withdraw from the hosting. He is also the ex-boyfriend of current Prime Minister Johnson's third wife Simonts (Carrie Symonds).

McCann, who was wearing a capable red suit and fighting alone, suddenly fainted and fell to the ground when Trass was answering her questions about Ukraine. Tras, who looked shocked before the live broadcast camera was turned off, became the preference of the front pages of major newspapers on the 27th.

Tras's popularity in traditional media overshadowed Sunak, which is also in line with the current poll results, and even the betting odds issued by bookmakers are exactly the same.

But in fact, it’s hard to say who will win, because the leader of the campaign party does not need to convince all voters. This is an internal affairs of the Conservative Party. Just convince the about 160,000 Conservative Party members.

Only Conservative Party members who pay £25 per year have the final say. They are usually older, more white, and more middle-class than other populations.

According to a survey by Tim Bale, a professor of political science at Queen Mary University in London, 63% of the Conservative Party members are male; 76% support Brexit; 56% live in London and southeast England; 80% belong to the highest socio-economic group known as ABC1, and one in every 20 people earns more than 100,000 pounds a year.

"The person who can choose the next prime minister is far from the representative of all voters," Bell said.

In this Conservative Party power battle, people have seen unprecedented diversity - 6 out of the 11 candidates are minorities, and they have also seen unprecedented sharp intra-party differences.

When this disagreement falls on the two final opponents, it seems inevitably to cause a less friendly personal attack. This made the first debate hosted by the BBC on the evening of the 25th tense. The two positions were far less like colleagues who had worked in the same cabinet. Both Oxford alumni were eager to label each other's strategies as "moral errors". Sunak also interrupted the speech of Tras, whom he would never agree with, so that the host had to remind him that the lady opposite had to allow the woman to finish her words.

Sunak's basic positions are three: First, postpone tax cuts before inflation is controlled; second, the company tax will continue to increase from 19% to 25% next year; third, take a tough stance on the increase in salary prices to avoid a spiral increase in wage prices.

Tras proposed a tax cut plan worth 30 billion pounds; promised not to raise corporate taxes, borrow more debts, and introduce emergency budgets; and reversed Sunak's National Insurance (NI) increase plan when he was the prime minister of finance.

Sunak said that his approach is to handle the national finance responsibly and cautiously. Trass' approach will give the Conservatives "absolutely no chance" to win the next election; while Tras accused Sunak of raising taxes to "the highest tax rate in 70 years", which will reduce Britain's competitiveness and push the economy to recession.

The only warm moment in this fierce TV debate was when Trass said she was willing to work with Sunak; Sunak also responded politely that if she won, he would accept a (cabinet) job.

However, the dust of debate has not yet been settled. A spokesman for Tras said: "Sunak proved tonight that he was not suitable for public office... His aggressive explanation and yelling private school behavior are desperate, inappropriate, a gift to Labour ."

In fact, in the view of Labour leader Keir Starmer, it seems that both candidates are gifts. He showed that he would not support the economic commitment of any candidate—Sunak was still managing the economy until a few weeks ago, but acted as if he had just come down from the moon and realized how bad everything was; and Tras voted in House of Commons for every tax increase bill, so what she said now “really no credibility.”

Stumer called them both "the troubled architects of this country." "I really don't think that after 12 years of failure, the answer we need is another Conservative leader," he said.

But as long as the election has not begun, the opposition party's presence is limited to this.

Sunak's "U" turn

Just after the tax issue has become a recognized clear dividing line between two Conservative leaders contenders, it is shocking that Sunak suddenly turns around.

In this live debate that died midway on Tuesday night, Sunak unexpectedly announced that if he came to power, he would cancel the energy bill for one year from October, which would be equivalent to a £160 reduction per household to help the people solve the cost of living crisis.

You should know that before that, this former financial minister has been striving to fight inflation and will never cut taxes until inflation is controlled. Supporters of

Sunak said the policy is expected to cost £4.3 billion, which is much less expensive than the £30 billion tax cut plan in Tras, and is a one-time measure that will not have a lasting impact on public finances.

But tax cuts are tax cuts, which do not seem to be enough to justify his policy "big turn".

Why did Sunak make a sharp turn? First, the pressure of backward poll support ratings, and second, the pressure of a sharp increase in living costs.

According to a polling agency YouGov's survey of Conservative Party members, after the first round of live TV debate, 50% of people thought Tras performed better, and only 39% believed that Sunak performed better. When dealing with the cost of living crisis, 55% of people are optimistic about Tras' approach, while 34% support Sunak.

Another previous poll of Conservative Party members showed that Tras was the first choice Conservative leader of 49% of respondents, with 31% choosing Sunak, and 15% of them answered that they didn't know, 6% intend to abstain. Excluding the latter two types of people, Tras's lead over Sunak reached 24 percentage points.

To win the key to No. 10 Downing Street, Sunak must shorten the support gap with Tras as soon as possible.

Faced with soaring energy bills, Sunak announced that he would give each household a £400 subsidy of energy bills when he was in office, and the most vulnerable poor families would receive £1,200. But with the price of natural gas rising again in recent days, the latest estimate on the 26th showed that the energy price ceiling will reach £3,244 by October this year, and it is increasingly agreed that the incoming prime minister needs to take more action to help people cope with the energy bills that they cannot afford. In addition to temporary VAT reduction and exemption, Sunak also announced that it would tighten welfare rules and encourage importers to use , Dutch and Denmark ports to reduce Britain's dependence on French ports.

Sunak believes in Hinduism . Both parents are Indian. In his early years, he came to the UK from East African . His father was an general practitioner . His mother runs his own pharmacy and belongs to the true middle class.

He was born in 1980 in Southampton , and entered Oxford to study philosophy, politics and economy from the expensive Winchester Public School . While studying for a master's degree in business administration at Stanford University, he met his wife Akshata Murthy, whose father is Narayana Murthy, the sixth-ranked billionaire in India and co-founder of IT service giant Infosys. He worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in his early years, and later became a partner of , two hedge funds.

Although Sunak is a rookie in politics, he is highly valued. In 2015, he became a member of the Conservative House of Commons and served as junior minister in Theresa May's administration. In July 2019, Johnson promoted him to Chief Secretary of State for the Ministry of Finance. In February of the following year, then Prime Minister Javid resigned in a conflict with the Prime Minister's Office, and the 39-year-old Sunak was directly promoted to Prime Minister of Finance by Johnson.

generously introduced a number of support policies worth 350 billion pounds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to welcome Sunak’s praise, but critics also questioned whether the billionaire son-in-law, who inspected hundreds of pounds of water cups, wearing three thousand pounds of customized suits and wearing Prada leather shoes, truly understand the suffering of the people - to understand the scale of the cost of living faced by those struggling families.

His wife's tax affairs also became the focus of the media in April this year. In order to ease the political pressure on her husband, she announced that she began to pay British taxes on her overseas income.

For those hardcore supporters of Johnson, the chain reaction caused by Sunak's resignation also made him labeled an unforgivable "betrayer".

Tras: The third generation of "Iron Lady"?

Margaret Thatcher, who has been in power for 15 years, is undoubtedly one of the most important spiritual leaders of the Conservative Party and a benchmark for the two candidates to rush closer.

Sunak said he reflected Thatcherism in his introduction of a complete set of reform plans to drive growth. He also said that Mrs. Thatcher "controlled inflation" before lowering taxes and that he will use her as a role model. Tras, who is striving to become the third female prime minister in the UK, complained in an interview: "Female politicians are always compared to Thatcher, while male politicians cannot be compared to Edward Heath, which is very frustrating."

Heath stepped down in disgrace in the early election caused by the miners' strike in 1974, and replaced the Conservative leader the following year by Mrs. Thatcher, and has been depressed for life since then.

Despite this, the media has noticed that Tras has worn clothes that are very similar to that of Mrs. Thatcher more than once this year, so that he no longer thinks it is a pure coincidence; and when talking about foreign policy, the foreign minister's tone seems to be increasingly "Thatcher".

, born in Oxford in 1975, is not that traditional Conservative. Her math professor's father and nurse's mother both belonged to the "Labor left" who were enthusiastic about politics in her early years. Tras went to Oxford from a public high school in the north to study philosophy, politics and economics. As chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party at Oxford, she claimed to be in favor of abolishing the monarchy, and she turned to the Conservative Party the year she graduated.After graduating from

, she worked as an accountant in a large company and had two children with her financial director husband.

Her political career experienced the setbacks caused by the exposure of an extramarital affair with a senior Conservative MP in the early days. After two consecutive general elections failed to run for MPs, in 2010, then Conservative leader Cameron included Tras from the North on the list of priority candidates. She successfully entered the House of Commons in Norfolk, Southwest China. She was appointed as the second-ranking official of the Ministry of Education in September 2012 and promoted to Secretary of Environment and Food in 2014.

In 2016, Tras became the Justice Minister of the Cabinet of Theresa May; the following year he became the Chief Secretary of the Ministry of Finance; after Johnson came to power in 2019, she was appointed Minister of International Trade, responsible for negotiating bilateral trade agreements with various countries after Brexit; in 2021, Raab, who was basking in the sun in Greece in the crisis, was transferred to the Justice Minister, and she took over as Foreign Minister.

Although he supported staying in the 2016 referendum, Tras began embracing the results of Brexit after the referendum. As Foreign Minister, Tras showed a tough style in his differences with EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Mrs. Thatcher's spirit of fighting the union back then obviously inspired Tras. On 27, she vowed to stop the union's "militaristic action", saying that she would raise the minimum threshold for voting to support the strike action after she came to power and double the required notification period from two weeks to four weeks. She also intends to introduce minimum service levels of laws to critical national infrastructure in the first 30 days of her prime minister’s tenure, which will limit strikes in teachers, postal workers and the energy sector.

"We need to take tough and decisive actions to limit the ability of union to paralyze our economy," she said. "I will do my best to ensure that the aggressive union movement no longer undermines the important services that hard-working people rely on."

. Mick Lynch, secretary general of the British Railway Transport Industry Union (RMT), who led the railway strike, also pointed his finger at Tras, calling on union members to fight back against the Conservative government's intention to suppress unions.

"Tras proposed to set the effective union movement illegal in the UK and deprive the working people of the key democratic rights," Lynch said. "If these proposals become law, it will put the greatest resistance to the entire union movement."

In addition to railway workers going on strike for another two days on August 18 and 20, in fact, trade union organizations in all areas of the public service sector are basically considering taking broader strike action. Thousands of Royal Mail workers voted to strike in August last week. Earlier this month, England and Wales lawyers held a five-day strike.

On a forum dominated by Labor supporters, it was full of anger at Tras trying to “break the union”:

“Accusing unions of destroying the economy is a Goebbels-like lie. Did she forget who weakened the economy in 2008, who first held the begging rescue bowl, destroyed public finances in the process?”

“The 12-year austerity measures against these public services have had a far greater impact on weakening key services than the occasional strike.”

…

…

At the age of 29, Tras successfully played Mrs. Thatcher in a drama performed in school. Can she truly become the "Iron Lady" on the real political stage just celebrate her 47th birthday yesterday?

E N D

Editor of this issue Li Yutong Intern Wu Ziying

When this disagreement falls on the two final opponents, it seems inevitably to cause a less friendly personal attack. This made the first debate hosted by the BBC on the evening of the 25th tense. The two positions were far less like colleagues who had worked in the same cabinet. Both Oxford alumni were eager to label each other's strategies as "moral errors". Sunak also interrupted the speech of Tras, whom he would never agree with, so that the host had to remind him that the lady opposite had to allow the woman to finish her words.

Sunak's basic positions are three: First, postpone tax cuts before inflation is controlled; second, the company tax will continue to increase from 19% to 25% next year; third, take a tough stance on the increase in salary prices to avoid a spiral increase in wage prices.

Tras proposed a tax cut plan worth 30 billion pounds; promised not to raise corporate taxes, borrow more debts, and introduce emergency budgets; and reversed Sunak's National Insurance (NI) increase plan when he was the prime minister of finance.

Sunak said that his approach is to handle the national finance responsibly and cautiously. Trass' approach will give the Conservatives "absolutely no chance" to win the next election; while Tras accused Sunak of raising taxes to "the highest tax rate in 70 years", which will reduce Britain's competitiveness and push the economy to recession.

The only warm moment in this fierce TV debate was when Trass said she was willing to work with Sunak; Sunak also responded politely that if she won, he would accept a (cabinet) job.

However, the dust of debate has not yet been settled. A spokesman for Tras said: "Sunak proved tonight that he was not suitable for public office... His aggressive explanation and yelling private school behavior are desperate, inappropriate, a gift to Labour ."

In fact, in the view of Labour leader Keir Starmer, it seems that both candidates are gifts. He showed that he would not support the economic commitment of any candidate—Sunak was still managing the economy until a few weeks ago, but acted as if he had just come down from the moon and realized how bad everything was; and Tras voted in House of Commons for every tax increase bill, so what she said now “really no credibility.”

Stumer called them both "the troubled architects of this country." "I really don't think that after 12 years of failure, the answer we need is another Conservative leader," he said.

But as long as the election has not begun, the opposition party's presence is limited to this.

Sunak's "U" turn

Just after the tax issue has become a recognized clear dividing line between two Conservative leaders contenders, it is shocking that Sunak suddenly turns around.

In this live debate that died midway on Tuesday night, Sunak unexpectedly announced that if he came to power, he would cancel the energy bill for one year from October, which would be equivalent to a £160 reduction per household to help the people solve the cost of living crisis.

You should know that before that, this former financial minister has been striving to fight inflation and will never cut taxes until inflation is controlled. Supporters of

Sunak said the policy is expected to cost £4.3 billion, which is much less expensive than the £30 billion tax cut plan in Tras, and is a one-time measure that will not have a lasting impact on public finances.

But tax cuts are tax cuts, which do not seem to be enough to justify his policy "big turn".

Why did Sunak make a sharp turn? First, the pressure of backward poll support ratings, and second, the pressure of a sharp increase in living costs.

According to a polling agency YouGov's survey of Conservative Party members, after the first round of live TV debate, 50% of people thought Tras performed better, and only 39% believed that Sunak performed better. When dealing with the cost of living crisis, 55% of people are optimistic about Tras' approach, while 34% support Sunak.

Another previous poll of Conservative Party members showed that Tras was the first choice Conservative leader of 49% of respondents, with 31% choosing Sunak, and 15% of them answered that they didn't know, 6% intend to abstain. Excluding the latter two types of people, Tras's lead over Sunak reached 24 percentage points.

To win the key to No. 10 Downing Street, Sunak must shorten the support gap with Tras as soon as possible.

Faced with soaring energy bills, Sunak announced that he would give each household a £400 subsidy of energy bills when he was in office, and the most vulnerable poor families would receive £1,200. But with the price of natural gas rising again in recent days, the latest estimate on the 26th showed that the energy price ceiling will reach £3,244 by October this year, and it is increasingly agreed that the incoming prime minister needs to take more action to help people cope with the energy bills that they cannot afford. In addition to temporary VAT reduction and exemption, Sunak also announced that it would tighten welfare rules and encourage importers to use , Dutch and Denmark ports to reduce Britain's dependence on French ports.

Sunak believes in Hinduism . Both parents are Indian. In his early years, he came to the UK from East African . His father was an general practitioner . His mother runs his own pharmacy and belongs to the true middle class.

He was born in 1980 in Southampton , and entered Oxford to study philosophy, politics and economy from the expensive Winchester Public School . While studying for a master's degree in business administration at Stanford University, he met his wife Akshata Murthy, whose father is Narayana Murthy, the sixth-ranked billionaire in India and co-founder of IT service giant Infosys. He worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in his early years, and later became a partner of , two hedge funds.

Although Sunak is a rookie in politics, he is highly valued. In 2015, he became a member of the Conservative House of Commons and served as junior minister in Theresa May's administration. In July 2019, Johnson promoted him to Chief Secretary of State for the Ministry of Finance. In February of the following year, then Prime Minister Javid resigned in a conflict with the Prime Minister's Office, and the 39-year-old Sunak was directly promoted to Prime Minister of Finance by Johnson.

generously introduced a number of support policies worth 350 billion pounds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to welcome Sunak’s praise, but critics also questioned whether the billionaire son-in-law, who inspected hundreds of pounds of water cups, wearing three thousand pounds of customized suits and wearing Prada leather shoes, truly understand the suffering of the people - to understand the scale of the cost of living faced by those struggling families.

His wife's tax affairs also became the focus of the media in April this year. In order to ease the political pressure on her husband, she announced that she began to pay British taxes on her overseas income.

For those hardcore supporters of Johnson, the chain reaction caused by Sunak's resignation also made him labeled an unforgivable "betrayer".

Tras: The third generation of "Iron Lady"?

Margaret Thatcher, who has been in power for 15 years, is undoubtedly one of the most important spiritual leaders of the Conservative Party and a benchmark for the two candidates to rush closer.

Sunak said he reflected Thatcherism in his introduction of a complete set of reform plans to drive growth. He also said that Mrs. Thatcher "controlled inflation" before lowering taxes and that he will use her as a role model. Tras, who is striving to become the third female prime minister in the UK, complained in an interview: "Female politicians are always compared to Thatcher, while male politicians cannot be compared to Edward Heath, which is very frustrating."

Heath stepped down in disgrace in the early election caused by the miners' strike in 1974, and replaced the Conservative leader the following year by Mrs. Thatcher, and has been depressed for life since then.

Despite this, the media has noticed that Tras has worn clothes that are very similar to that of Mrs. Thatcher more than once this year, so that he no longer thinks it is a pure coincidence; and when talking about foreign policy, the foreign minister's tone seems to be increasingly "Thatcher".

, born in Oxford in 1975, is not that traditional Conservative. Her math professor's father and nurse's mother both belonged to the "Labor left" who were enthusiastic about politics in her early years. Tras went to Oxford from a public high school in the north to study philosophy, politics and economics. As chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party at Oxford, she claimed to be in favor of abolishing the monarchy, and she turned to the Conservative Party the year she graduated.After graduating from

, she worked as an accountant in a large company and had two children with her financial director husband.

Her political career experienced the setbacks caused by the exposure of an extramarital affair with a senior Conservative MP in the early days. After two consecutive general elections failed to run for MPs, in 2010, then Conservative leader Cameron included Tras from the North on the list of priority candidates. She successfully entered the House of Commons in Norfolk, Southwest China. She was appointed as the second-ranking official of the Ministry of Education in September 2012 and promoted to Secretary of Environment and Food in 2014.

In 2016, Tras became the Justice Minister of the Cabinet of Theresa May; the following year he became the Chief Secretary of the Ministry of Finance; after Johnson came to power in 2019, she was appointed Minister of International Trade, responsible for negotiating bilateral trade agreements with various countries after Brexit; in 2021, Raab, who was basking in the sun in Greece in the crisis, was transferred to the Justice Minister, and she took over as Foreign Minister.

Although he supported staying in the 2016 referendum, Tras began embracing the results of Brexit after the referendum. As Foreign Minister, Tras showed a tough style in his differences with EU on the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

Mrs. Thatcher's spirit of fighting the union back then obviously inspired Tras. On 27, she vowed to stop the union's "militaristic action", saying that she would raise the minimum threshold for voting to support the strike action after she came to power and double the required notification period from two weeks to four weeks. She also intends to introduce minimum service levels of laws to critical national infrastructure in the first 30 days of her prime minister’s tenure, which will limit strikes in teachers, postal workers and the energy sector.

"We need to take tough and decisive actions to limit the ability of union to paralyze our economy," she said. "I will do my best to ensure that the aggressive union movement no longer undermines the important services that hard-working people rely on."

. Mick Lynch, secretary general of the British Railway Transport Industry Union (RMT), who led the railway strike, also pointed his finger at Tras, calling on union members to fight back against the Conservative government's intention to suppress unions.

"Tras proposed to set the effective union movement illegal in the UK and deprive the working people of the key democratic rights," Lynch said. "If these proposals become law, it will put the greatest resistance to the entire union movement."

In addition to railway workers going on strike for another two days on August 18 and 20, in fact, trade union organizations in all areas of the public service sector are basically considering taking broader strike action. Thousands of Royal Mail workers voted to strike in August last week. Earlier this month, England and Wales lawyers held a five-day strike.

On a forum dominated by Labor supporters, it was full of anger at Tras trying to “break the union”:

“Accusing unions of destroying the economy is a Goebbels-like lie. Did she forget who weakened the economy in 2008, who first held the begging rescue bowl, destroyed public finances in the process?”

“The 12-year austerity measures against these public services have had a far greater impact on weakening key services than the occasional strike.”

…

…

At the age of 29, Tras successfully played Mrs. Thatcher in a drama performed in school. Can she truly become the "Iron Lady" on the real political stage just celebrate her 47th birthday yesterday?

E N D

Editor of this issue Li Yutong Intern Wu Ziying