Battle for the North: Truss v Sunak

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will battle it out in front of Conservative party members in Leeds tonight, in the first of 12 regional hustings of their leadership campaign.

The two-hour stint, starting at 7pm, will see the duo trying to outdo one another on their commitment to the north, as they seek to convince voters that the “levelling up agenda” promised at the 2019 general election, will not be shelved under their leadership. 

Both candidates will be keen to capitalise on their personal ties to the area. Expect scattered references from Truss to the chunk of her childhood spent in Leeds. Sunak, meanwhile, will be quick to remind the audience that he is the MP of a northern constituency; his seat of Richmond, Yorkshire is a mere hour’s drive from tonight’s tete-a-tete. 

Truss and Sunak have both acquired useful regional allies. Truss has won the backing of Jake Berry, the chair of the Northern Research Group – an alliance of Conservative MPs elected to represent northern constituencies in the 2019 election. According to Berry, “Liz is someone who gets things done..and can be trusted to keep her promises.”

But the Northern MPs are sharing their support.  Sunak has been bolstered by the backing of Ben Houchen, the charismatic incumbent Tory mayor for the Tees Valley, and a poster boy for the levelling up project. 

As the two gear up for tonight’s debate, it is Truss who has been the more proactive in promising new investment for the area. She has pledged to build – finally – the Northern Powerhouse Rail to link up communities across the North if she becomes leader. One of the criticism’s of Boris Johnson was that he scaled back this high-speed line, running from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester and Bradford, with Leeds and Bradford the biggest casualties from his downgrade.

Truss has, however, yet to reveal how she would fund this big shiny project. Johnson’s downgrade was estimated to save £14 billion. It’s important she does because otherwise she runs the risk of receiving more mocking comments, about her “magic money tree.”

Sunak’s position on the Northern Powerhouse Rail is less clear. The former Chancellor is thought to have been involved in Johnson’s decision to scale back the original project. Yet his backer Ben Houchen insists that both Truss and Sunak signed up weeks ago to his “five-point pledge”, which included a commitment to the “full construction” of NPR.

Tonight, Sunak will likely be forced to make his position clearer. More generally, the two candidates will face pressure to spell out their vision for tackling regional inequalities, on key issues such as child poverty and health inequality across the north. 

Despite Johnson’s incessant rhetoric about levelling up, the hustings take place just two days after the IPPR published a report questioning the impact of his legacy. Although total public spending has increased in every region of England under his premiership, this latest analysis showed that public spending on the North is still lower, and has grown less since 2019, than in other parts of the country.

So tonight’s debate will be a big deal for the so-called Red Wall and other Northern constituencies. Whether it’s Sunak or Truss who has the keys to No 10, northern voters will want to know there is enough investment to follow the promises.