Truss wins UK cabinet backing as voting begins in PM contest

British Conservative frontrunner Liz Truss won another heavyweight endorsement Monday as Tory members began a month of voting to decide the next occupant of 10 Downing Street.

Truss’s lagging rival Rishi Sunak vied to make up lost ground with a plan for future tax cuts — and potentially to fund a future women’s football World Cup in Britain after England’s “Lionesses” won the European championship.

Truss attended Sunday’s final against Germany, and the first victory by any England football team in a major tournament since 1966 wiped Sunak’s long-term tax slashing plan off all the front pages except The Daily Telegraph.

The Conservative party contenders were going head to head later Monday in a members’ hustings, in the southwestern city of Exeter — the second of 12 such events before the winner is announced on September 5, AFP reports.

Sunak, a polished debater, needs to recapture momentum after Truss steamed into a strong polling lead on a platform of immediate tax cuts to address Britain’s worst cost-of-living crisis in generations.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi joined other luminaries of Boris Johnson’s cabinet in backing the foreign secretary against Sunak, his predecessor in the Treasury.

“Liz understands that the status quo isn’t an option in times of crisis,” Zahawi wrote in the Telegraph, attacking Sunak’s plan to prioritise fighting inflation now, before cutting taxes later.

“We need a ‘booster’ attitude to the economy, not a ‘doomster’ one, in order to address cost-of-living woes and the challenges on the world stage,” the new chancellor said.

Sunak’s resignation from the scandal-tainted Johnson’s cabinet helped spark a ministerial exodus that forced the prime minister out last month.

As they began receiving postal and online ballot forms, a large chunk of the roughly 200,000 Tory members are said by pollsters to nurse a grievance against Sunak — one shared by Johnson.