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Comment by tut-urut-utut | Hacker News Reader

Well, Truss was not elected because of her economic (or any other) competence, but because of her hardliner course against Russia.

Rishi Sunak was a better choice in every category, but had two problems:

1. he is not "white"

2. he is not anti-Russian enough

EDIT: By "elected" I meant "elected by her own party".

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It'd be fairer to point out that neither Truss nor Sunak were "elected" (or not) in any normal democratic sense.

The former PM resigned due to scandal and Truss is a drop in replacement "elected" by a tiny tiny number of elites isolated from the public at large.

Rishi Sunak was claiming to be resident in the US while Chancellor of the Exchequer, while his wife was claiming non dom status to avoid paying tax. He was also hated by the supporters of the previous PM because he wielded the knife.

Also, the most popular candidate with the Conservative membership was Kemi Badenoch, who is black, but far more radical than Rishi Sunak, who was forced to defend Treasury orthodoxy.

I’m not convinced it has much to do with race.

I won't deny the UK doesn't have issues with race but it is not the US. Here class politics matter far more. Electing a multimillionaire married to a billionaire was never going to end well electorally.

You forget the voterbase for choosing the Conservative Party leader. Conservative Party members skew older, whiter and more racist than the general public. Although in this case being the man who defenestrated Johnson didn't help his chances.

She was mainly elected because of her promises to cut tax, versus Rishi's promises to stabilise things and cut services where necessary

The latter course of action wouldn't have been wildly popular with voters (even those outside the 100k party members that made the selection who are a lot more impressed by Thatcherite postures than the average person), but it wouldn't have sparked the present response from forex and financial markets.

I think the reason Rishi didn't sway Conservative party members is mostly 1., But you're not supposed to say it out loud. Truss was very much a nonentity until last month

The most popular candidate with the party members was Kemi Badenoch, a black woman, so it doesn’t seem credible that people voted against Rishi Sunak mostly because of race.

Well, supposedly the most popular was a black woman, the most competent was an Asian man, and who gets the post in the end? The most incompetent of them all, whose only advantage is being white.

If that is not racism, I don't know what it is.

The members weren’t allowed to choose Badenoch, she was eliminated at an early stage by the MP vote, probably because she was too radical and lacked ministerial experience.

It’s not a shock that elections are not won on competence.

"Most popular" and "too radical" are kinda contradictory here. If she was "too radical", she wasn't popular, at least as a PM candidate.

Different selectorates, different priorities. MPs who voted for the final two to be on the ballot had more established personal and political relationships with other candidates and saw her as an inexperienced MP with a few strange ideas about organising the Cabinet who was obsessed with culture war bullshit. The Conservative Party membership that didn't get to see her on the ballot were impressed with her debate performances and loved the culture war bullshit.

(tbh I didn't see much indication she was the 'most popular', but there were definitely plenty of members of the party receptive to her message, doubtless including many of those most likely to espouse racist sentiments)

Most popular with the membership but too radical for the MPs. It’s the same as Corbyn with Labour members and MPs.

I reckon racism would have played a part with some of the Tory party members. However, I think Sunak’s bigger problem was that he came across as very, very swish, fake, metropolitan and brown nosey which the traditional Tory party membership (country folk) absolutely detest. The City job, the expensive suits and short trousers with loafers, the pretending to drive a car, the “my favourite tv program is Emily in Paris”, the “I’m a Coca Cola addict”, the “Thanks PM” meme. He was Team Brexit, but everything about his personality screamed Team Remain. Contrast this with Liz Truss who was Team Remain but who “welcomes any Britain to go join Ukraine and fight Putin”, bellows for tax cuts for the rich and generally presents herself as a very traditional almost rural conservative person. I think when you look at it through this lens it makes a lot more sense.

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