Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, candidates to replace Boris Johnson, clashed during a new debate in Darlington, a Labor Bastion that had changed in the Torries camp in 2019.
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It has been half an hour that Rishi Sunak speaks, Tuesday, August 9, in front of a thousand members of the British conservative party gathered at the Darlington Hippodrome when the time of the rooms arrives. A man gets up and launches to him: “You know what is said: the one who handles the dagger never wears the crown.” A salvo of applause welcomes his remark.
Rishi Sunak, one of the two candidates to take the head of the party, is one of those who precipitated the fall of Boris Johnson. By putting his resignation on July 5, when he was Chancellor of the Echiquier, he caused a snowball effect leading to the British Prime Minister at the start.
In Darlington, in northern England, part of the activists do not forgive him. The blond troublemaker was their hero and electrified them. “It was a mistake to put it at the door,” regrets Kane Clarke, 69, who sips a glass of white wine at the exit of the performance hall. She had become a member of the Tories a little more than two years ago because she appreciated this politician who “brought a wind of fresh air”. John Watts, a 59 -year -old retirement policeman (“I appear less, right?”) Confirms: “When I listened to Boris Johnson, he kept me in suspense. He, at least, was not boring. “
Liz Truss, the other candidate for the leader of the Conservative Party, and favorite to win, is not mistaken. Before the same activists, she recalls that she has not resigned (she is still Minister of Foreign Affairs) and has never betrayed Boris Johnson. “I was one of the first to support him [in 2019, when he took the lead of the Tories]. And I don’t think he lied to parliament,” she said, answering a question From Tom Newton Dunn, the journalist who animates the evening.
a gaping hole difficult to fill
Boris Johnson was perhaps hated by part of the British, exasperated his European partners and unbeaned his own deputies, but his political charisma leaves a gaping hole that conservative activists have a hard time filling. The question is particularly sensitive to Darlington, a small town of a hundred thousand inhabitants located between Leeds and Newcastle. In December 2019, the constituency, then a labor bastion, switched to the conservative camp for the first time since 1992.
This victory was part of the fall of the “Red Wall”, around forty districts in northern England which traditionally voted and passed through the Conservatives in 2019. The switch to the right of the country was the country Body of the triumph of Boris Johnson, who brought back for the conservative party its stronger majority to the House of Commons from Margaret Thatcher. He had for him three masters to assert in these regions: his explosive personality, Brexit (Darlington voted for 56 %) and a promise to “rebalance the country”, to reduce inequalities between the North and the South.
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