A man, in his fifties, rather to the right of the party: this is the composite portrait of the 160,000 members of the British Conservative Party who must decide between the two candidates to replace Boris Johnson: the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. The party also has a minority of young activists, who intend to make their voices heard. Four of them – George Holt, one of the leaders of the Young Conservative Network organization, Thomas Moss, Salvatore Pagdades and Hassan Ali, give their opinion on the two candidates. They talk economy, charisma, and hardly Brexit.
Main observation, empirical but corroborating the polls, which place Liz Truss in favorite to become Prime Minister: three of the young militants lean for her. This is the case of Salvatore Pagdades, a 19-year-old student from Hertfordshire (north London), who finds his economic program “bold. We need it to get out of the difficult situation in which we find ourselves ”. The minister is proposing massive tax cuts described as “whimsical” by Mr. Sunak, who argues for tackling inflation first.
Salvatore has no problems with his candidate’s political career – Mme Truss started out as a Liberal Democrat and voted against Brexit in 2016. “A lot of young people start on the left and vote right as they get older! I’m a bit more reserved about her opposition to Brexit in 2016, but since then she’s changed. » He appreciates that M.me Truss has been the subject of less controversy than Rishi Sunak, whose wife of Indian origin and very wealthy did not pay taxes in the UK until recently. “I will still wait until the last moment to vote”, slips the student, in case revelations about Liz Truss come out in the media.
She “will be better”
Thomas Moss, a 21-year-old law student, is also an activist for Liz Truss. “I already wanted her to become prime minister when she was secretary of the Treasury [entre 2017 et 2019], I did not think that she would arrive so close to the goal! » He was seduced by his radical economic proposals: “We need people who do things differently. Rishi Sunak belongs to this class of politicians, who do not want to change much. However, the recipes for restarting our economy have not worked. And we forget that he too received a fine from the police [comme Boris Johnson, dans le cadre du « partygate »] for violating the rules of confinement. » It sweeps away one of the other criticisms made of Mme Truss, his lack of charisma “She’s not perfect, but when you watch videos of Margaret Thatcher on YouTube in the mid-1970s, she had a terrible voice. »
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