Readers of the Telegraph have heavily backed Liz Truss for the next prime minister according to a new poll of almost 10,000 subscribers. Six in ten readers chose the Foreign Secretary rather than former chancellor Rishi Sunak, in what is a sizeable blow to his campaign.
With both candidates for the Tory leadership chasing Consverative members' votes, the poll result from the right-leaning paper could be seen as a good indication of how the final vote could go.
Ms Truss today took a swipe at her rival's economic legacy, blaming it for the expected recession. During a campaign visit to the West Midlands, she told reporters: “Under the plans at present, what we know is Britain is headed for a recession.
"That is not inevitable, but we need to avoid that by making sure our economy is competitive, that we’re encouraging businesses to grow and that we are keeping taxes low. Having the highest taxes for 70 years is not going to deliver that economic growth and it’s leading our country to a recession.”
The Tory leadership contender declined to say whether her campaign was involved in the leaking of a video in which Sunak spoke about working to divert funding from deprived urban areas towards more prosperous towns.
She told reporters: “I’m running a positive campaign. My campaign is about how we unleash the potential of Britain, how we get the economy going in these difficult times, how we get investment into fantastic places like the West Midlands.”
Mr Sunak has spoken about how “political correctness” is standing in the way of tackling child sex grooming gangs as he vowed to force police to record the ethnicity of those involved.
In an interview with GB News, the Tory leadership contender said: “I have two young girls who are nine and 11, and I think for too long we just haven’t focused on this issue. It’s a horrific crime … It’s far more pervasive across the country than actually we all realise.
“We all know the reason that people don’t focus on it. It’s because of political correctness and they’re scared of calling out the fact that there’s a particular group of people who are perpetuating these crimes, and I think that’s wrong, and I want to change that as prime minister.
“I want to make sure that all police forces record the ethnicity of those involved, which currently is not done because people don’t want to do that. I want to create a brand new life sentence for those involved in grooming with very limited options for parole because I’m not going to let political correctness stand in the way of tackling this absolutely horrific crime”.
