Tory leadership hopefuls Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are set to be grilled by party members tonight in the seventh official hustings in the contest to replace lame duck Boris Johnson.
The showdown comes with just two weeks remaining in the race for No 10, with voting among the 160,000 fee-paying members of the Tory Party set to conclude on 2 September.
On Monday removal vans were photographed in Downing Street as the outgoing prime minister enjoys a second holiday in as many weeks in Greece – and will only work on “urgent” matters.
But tonight’s hustings in Perth follows bleak figures showing real wages fell at a record rate between April and June, with the Tories accused of “losing control” of the economy.
The Resolution Foundation think-tank said it represented the biggest fall in real average weekly earnings since 1977 – when Queen Elizabeth celebrated her Silver Jubillee.
The event is also likely to be overshadowed by surging energy bills and pressure on both the candidates from Labour leader Keir Starmer to suspend this month’s price cap increase.
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Labour’s frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth blasted: “Because of the Tories’ failure on the economy, families face plummeting real wages and soaring energy bills. Yet, this zombie government is offering no solutions to the cost of living crisis”.
It also the first Tory hustings north of the border and expect the controversial issue of a second Scottish referendum to feature heavily among members’ questions to Ms Truss and Mr Sunak.
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Ms Truss, the foreign secretary, prompted outrage earlier in the contest when she described the Scottish first minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon an “attention seeker”.
She told the party faithful at a hustings event the “best thing” to do with Ms Strugeon, who has demanded a second vote in October 2023 and is taking her case to the Supreme Court, “is ignore her”.
Speaking last week at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, however, Ms Sturgeon recalled a conversation with the Tory leadership hopeful on the sidelines of the UK’s climate change summit, Cop 26.
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“She [Ms Truss] wanted to know how she could get into Vogue – and she calls me an attention-seeker,” Ms Sturgeon said.
“I said to her they came and asked me. I didn’t really mean to do this, but I said to her it hadn’t actually been my first time in Vogue, it had been my second. It looked a little bit as if she’d swallowed a wasp. I’m sure she’ll be in Vogue before too long”.
Ahead of this evening’s husting, Ms Truss, the clear frontrunner in the contest, according to recent polling, said: “Having grown up in Paisley, I consider myself to be a child of the union.
“For too long, people in Scotland have been let down by the SNP focusing on constitutional division instead of their priorities. That won’t happen under my watch.”