UK PM candidate Sunak says “I'm the underdog”

Former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, one of the two remaining candidates to become Britain's next prime minister, on Saturday described himself as the underdog in the contest.

Sunak's resignation helped trigger a rebellion that culminated in Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreeing to step down after a series of scandals. Members of the ruling Conservative Party will vote for a successor over the summer, with an announcement due on September 5. Sunak led all rounds of voting among Conservative Party MPs, reducing the number of candidates to two. But it is Foreign Secretary Liz Truss who so far has the upper hand among the ruling party's 200,000 members who will choose the winner. Truss leads Sunak by 24 points in a YouGov poll of Conservative Party members on Thursday. "Make no mistake, I am the underdog," Sunak said in a speech in Grantham in central England, the birthplace of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Truss will become only the third female prime minister of the UK after Thatcher and Theresa May, while Sunak will be the country's first leader of Indian origin. "People want this to be a coronation for the other candidate but I think members want a choice and they are ready to listen," she said. The focus so far has been on promises made or broken on issues such as tax cuts, defense spending and energy policy at a time when many people are struggling. In his speech, Mr. Sunak played up his Thatcherite credentials, promising careful management of the economy before tax cuts. He criticized Truss's pledge to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 as arbitrary. In an interview with Saturday's Times, Sunak said he would put the government on a crisis footing as soon as he took office.