London (AFP)
Britain’s top foreign secretary, Liz Terrace, appears in a very good position to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister in September, a new opinion poll published yesterday showed.
Terrace leads its rival, former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, by 32 points. She was supported by 66% of Conservative Party members, while 34% supported Sunak, according to a poll conducted by YouGov in cooperation with Sky News, without taking into account the 13% of members who have not yet made a decision. .
Two weeks ago, a YouGov poll conducted in cooperation with The Times newspaper gave it a 38-point lead.
The intense debates that took place in recent weeks between the two candidates to succeed Johnson focused on the tense economic and social situation, as inflation exceeded ten percent, while many sectors witnessed strikes in the face of the erosion of purchasing power.
Boris Johnson was forced to resign on July 7, following more than 50 resignations in the ruling political team, following the scandals surrounding him and the repeated lies issued by him.
Conservative party members, numbering regarding 200,000 this summer, are voting by mail or online to decide who will replace Johnson as party leader, and thus prime minister, which will be decided on Sept. 5.
About 57 percent of party members, mostly male, white and older, said they had actually voted, while 38 percent had not. Liz Trace, a 47-year-old right-winger, claims to be Margaret Thatcher. According to the same poll, she advanced by 37 points among those who actually voted, with 68 percent for her compared to 31 percent for Sunak.
The poll, which was conducted on 1,089 party members, also showed that the two candidates are still less popular than Boris Johnson, who, had he been in the race, would have obtained 46 percent of the votes of party members, compared to 24 percent for Terrace and 23 percent for Sunak.
