Candidates for prime minister judged on defence and climate
Quakers have been sharing assessments on the final two candidates – Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss
As the Conservative leadership race heats up, Quakers have been sharing assessments on how the final two candidates – Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss – stand on defence and climate proposals.
According to the Global Campaign on Military Spending, as chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak ‘oversaw the largest percentage increase in UK military spending in almost seventy years, representing £24bn in additional funding this parliament’.
He has also described the NATO two per cent of GDP target ‘as a floor, not a ceiling’, despite resisting calls to increase the budget further in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The campaign group also assessed pledges made by Liz Truss to increase military spending to three per cent of GDP by 2030 and take a more ‘proactive’ stance against Russia and China. The current ‘bookie’s favourite’ has also been ‘vocal on military spending in her role as foreign secretary, particularly in calling out NATO allies’.
Meanwhile, green experts have criticised the former chancellor and foreign secretary for their lack of commitment on the climate emergency. The UK’s target to reach net-zero by 2050 has been a particular focus.
Rishi Sunak said at the ITV debate on 17 July that he was committed to the policy but cautioned: ‘If we go too hard and too fast then we will lose people. And that’s no way to get there, and I think we can get there in a way that’s about growth, that’s about jobs, that’s about industries of the future, and that’s the way to do it.’
Meanwhile Liz Truss committed to the policy but added that we needed to ‘find better ways to deliver net zero’ that won’t ‘harm people and businesses’. She also indicated in an earlier Channel 4 debate that she plans to suspend or remove the green levy, claiming that it was ‘hammering consumers’. Climate campaigners have also noted that, as environment secretary in 2014, Liz Truss cut subsidies for solar farms, calling them ‘a blight on the landscape’, and has some of the most prominent net zero sceptics among her supporters.
There has also been criticism that the estimated 160,000 Conservative Party fee-paying members who will select the new leader are unrepresentative. Research shows that they are disproportionately male, white and more likely to live in London and the south of England. In 2017, seventy-one per cent were men and the average age at the time was fifty seven. Meanwhile a YouGov poll last week for The Times says that only four per cent of the members put net-zero in their top three priorities for the new leader. Winning the next election, controlling immigration and cutting taxes came higher.
MP Chris Skidmore, who signed the net zero legislation into law in 2019, told BBC News that he had been speaking to the candidates to make them aware that polling in marginal ‘red wall’ areas suggests that people do care about climate change.
Greenpeace called for ten key commitments, including investing in ‘the biggest ever UK-wide home insulation programme’ and rapidly growing onshore and offshore renewable energy.
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