Comment LONDON — Britain’s next prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party is now guaranteed to be an ethnic minority or a woman after Tory MPs on Wednesday chose two finalists — former finance minister Rishi Sunak and foreign secretary Liz Truss — with a winner to be announced in September. While Boris Johnson continues as a sort of happy caretaker prime minister, the contest to replace him will now go to the 200,000 or so dues-paying members of the Conservative Party, who will choose, by postal ballot, Johnson’s successor. There will be no general election to choose the new prime minister, and many of the ‘promotional’ events will be unusual or unexpected for the British press. How the UK’s next Prime Minister will be chosen The showdown between Sunak and Truss offers Tory voters a choice between a man they say is the only adult in the race and a woman they say is the only one who has shown real leadership. If Truss wins, it will be the third time the Conservative Party has appointed a woman to the highest office, following the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. The two candidates are both conservative, and to the outside world their policy differences are subtle. Truss supports a raft of tax cuts. Sunak says Britain must first get inflation under control. He has suggested that the tax cuts are a kind of economic “fantasy islands” and that Truss and her side have no idea how they will pay for the borrowing needed to keep the UK government afloat after two years of pandemic subsidies. Sunak is a former Goldman Sachs heavyweight, a former hedge fund manager. She married really rich people. His wife, whom he met at Stanford, is the daughter of NR Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire who founded Infosys. Sunak and his wife Aksatha Murthy made the Sunday Times list of Britain’s 250 richest people, with a combined fortune estimated at 730 million pounds, or about $875 million. Truss is Britain’s first female Tory foreign secretary, who says she is ready to lead the country “from day one”. Truss won applause for her support for the Ukraine war – and came under fire from Russia. Although she opposed the 2016 Brexit referendum, she has since said she regrets that vote and has been a prominent voice in arguing that Britain should rewrite provisions on Northern Ireland in the post-Brexit trade deal. The two will spend the summer — at golf course dinners, civic center auditoriums, discreet gatherings with donors — making their case. Meanwhile, Johnson will be saying goodbye for a long time. On Wednesday, he said goodbye to the House of Commons – and his fellow MPs who gave him the boot – in a raucous display that signaled the near end of his premiership and this strange, shape-shifting Boris era. Or as Johnson put it, “I want to thank everyone here and hasta la vista, baby!” Seriously, those were his last words – to borrow the catchphrase popularized by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie ‘Terminator 2’. Echoing President George W. Bush’s early declaration of victory in Iraq, Johnson declared his legacy: “mission largely accomplished.” Did it fit? Was it a slide? Was he… a genius? Johnson, a serial lover who relishes the role of entertaining after-dinner speaker, won the hearts of his party and the country with such lines. And don’t forget, Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California, not once but twice. Johnson is on his way. But many in the halls of Westminster expect he could one day return. What next for Boris Johnson? Books, columns, speeches, return? It wasn’t a somber farewell from him on Wednesday, but all the surface, all the talking points, all the greatest hits, delivered with punches and the prime minister’s trademark runaway high-speed delivery. The House of Commons was packed — and roared, full of the usual insults and scoring typical of the weekly session known as Prime Minister’s Questions, a dueling competition for debaters graduated from Oxford and Cambridge. There was a shake-up, there was a commotion, there was a “sit-down chase,” a former legendary speaker of the House once called it. Johnson on Wednesday stood in the prime minister’s place in the “dispatch box” for what he called “probably, definitely” his latest verbal beating. At the end of his remarks he gave the following advice to his successor: “Stay close to the Americans, support the Ukrainians, support freedom and democracy everywhere.” Who will be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? What you need to know about candidates. And also: “Cut taxes and deregulate where you can to make this a better place to live and invest.” “Focus on the road ahead, but always remember to check the mirror,” the Prime Minister said. “And remember, above all, it’s not Twitter that counts. It’s the people who sent us here,” he concluded. Earlier in the day, Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labor Party, asked Johnson what message the public might get as candidates for his job “can’t find a single decent thing” to say about the prime minister or his record. of the government of ?
