A clip of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak criticising the way the current government has handled the country has gone viral.
Despite both being senior ministers under Boris Johnson for a significant portion of his premiership, the two leadership hopefuls slated the state the UK is currently in during the first 30 minutes of Tuesday’s debate.
For context, Truss is actually still part of this government. She has been the women and equality minister since September 2019 and held the role of international trade secretary from the same period, until Johnson appointed her as foreign secretary in September last year.
Sunak was chancellor of the exchequer up until three weeks ago when he dramatically quit, triggering a mass exodus of Tory MPs from the government and forcing Johnson to resign. But even before he was promoted to the top job, he had worked as the chief secretary to the Treasury since 2019.
So that makes the footage from Tuesday’s debate, cut together by prominent government critic Peter Stefanovic, even more remarkable as both candidates promise that they can somehow steady the course.
Sunak pointed out that “energy bills are doubling” and that “inflation at a 40-year-high” – despite having a senior role in the Treasury’s policy-making for three years.
The video then cuts to Truss, who declared: “We currently have the highest tax burden that we’ve had for 70 years. We have anaemic growth in this country. we’ve got the lowest growth projected in the G7.”
Sunak also said: “Millions of families across the country are grappling with rising bills, in food, filling up your car, and everything else.”
Truss does take aim at Sunak in particular for increasing National Insurance contributions in April this year, while he admits that “many families are having to cut back”.
“The answer has got to be that we have to do things differently,” Sunak also claims.
″I’m afraid some of our hospitals are falling apart,” Truss also observes, before going on to advocate for the Tories’ pledge to build 40 new hospitals.
“I do think it is morally wrong when families are struggling to pay for their food, that we have put up taxes on ordinary people in our manifesto,” she added – even though she actually voted to raise national insurance when it came to the Commons vote earlier this year.
