The Tory Leadership Contest Shows That the Conservative Party Is All Out of Ideas
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are vying to become the fourth Conservative leader since 2016. Neither candidate has any real answers to Britain’s problems — or even the dilemmas facing their own party.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak before taking part in the BBC Tory leadership debate live on July 25, 2022. (Jacob King / PA Wire via Getty Images)
This summer, Conservative Party members will choose the next leader of their party from two candidates: the former chancellor, Rishi Sunak, or the current foreign secretary, Liz Truss. Whoever prevails will become the fourth Tory prime minister in six years. We have not seen this kind of leadership turnover in a governing party since the late 1820s, prior to the foundation of the modern Conservatives.
The immediate cause of Boris Johnson’s career as prime minister may have been his brash, lazy, and reckless approach to the job. Yet there is a deeper crisis eating away at the Tories that underpins these successive changes of personnel, one where the party is in tension with the general commercial interests of British capital.
The Road From Bruges
Since the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of the European Union, in 1973, there has always been a section of British business skeptical of European integration if not outright hostile to it. This sentiment has tended to be centered on the City of London, Britain’s financial center, which the Tories and (to some extent) Labour have long regarded as sacrosanct.
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