 Hello everyone. Welcome to another IR capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. Today our topic is the UK elections. Today you must have heard the shocking news this morning that the second debate between the two candidates that is Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss was interrupted by a medical emergency in the team. One of the reporters fell unconscious while the debate was in progress and therefore tried to be abandoned. So we do not know when the next debate is. So we only have the first debate and the second debate part of it to be analyzed. I'm sure you all know follow the sequence of events in the UK. Mr Johnson resigned basically because the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak resigned from the cabinet and several other cabinet members also resigned and it was difficult for Boris Johnson to continue as Prime Minister and therefore he resigned but he announced that he'll continue till a new Prime Minister is elected. That would be take a little long time because it is unexpected. There's a midterm elections unexpected. So the first process was to select two candidates from several who appeared in the first instance and the members of parliament of the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party is the ruling party and Johnson's party and so for two more years the power will be for the Conservatives of the Tories as they are known and the Labour is waiting after two years to contest elections and beat the Conservative Party. Anyway so the first was that that the members of parliament who belong to the Conservative Party voted on about six or seven candidates and the last two emerge. One was originally the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Finance Minister Rishi Sunak who is of Indian origin. Everybody knows that he is the son-in-law of Mr Narayana Murthy. He was the front runner and the current Foreign Minister because he has not resigned and therefore she is still Foreign Minister while Sunak is the former Finance Minister and Liz Truss who is presently the Foreign Minister were the front runners and Sunak had a fairly good lead and that took them to the first BBC debate which took place a few days ago. After every debate like this public debate there will always be a snap poll and the snap poll it was found that there were neck and neck 39 and 38. It cannot be closer than that and so it was a bit indecisive. Anyway the debate doesn't take positions after all these debates they have to go to the 160,000 leading members of the Conservative Party who will elect a leader and he will be the Prime Minister. So now we are in the run-up to the election of the Prime Minister by the Conservative Party members. Those who elected these two people were the Conservative Party members of the Parliament. So they chose the front runners and now 160,000 people will vote sometime in August and the results will be announced on September 5th and the new Prime Minister will take over on September 6th. So there is considerable excitement and tension about this not only in UK but also in India because one of the leading candidates happens to be of Indian origin and this is the first development of this kind of an Indian origin person becoming so close to be the Prime Minister of the UK. So first we have to examine what their platforms are, what are they planning to do and what are their programs. They belong to the same party so programs have to be close to each other but since they are contesting against each other each will try to show that he or she is a better Conservative than the other and therefore this debate was concentrated on that and there are several issues starting from economic issues which are always crucial because Europe is infirm and Europe is in a complete disarray. There is no leadership in Europe anymore because Angela Merkel is gone, her successor is new, President Macron has lost his majority in Parliament, Boris Johnson has left. Then who is there to lead the European Union or Europe itself because UK is not in the European Union. So at a time when there is a crisis, a war in Ukraine in which NATO and the European Union are involved morally if not physically, at that time it's very crucial to have a able Prime Minister. So the first question that they debated was about their prospective capability and also their agenda as far as the economic policies concerned. So in that they both have more or less the same ideas but Sunak believes that he has to tax the bigger companies that is one of his platforms but Liz Truss opposes it. She thinks that if this is done then the lower the companies will become more attractive but they will become less competitive. The bigger companies will not be able to compete in the world market. So there is a difference of opinion on this. Who should be given tax cuts to whom? So Sunak's point is that if you give it to the bigger companies that will encourage the smaller companies also and the production will increase but Liz does not believe in that. That is one issue. The second issue is China. Both are of course opposed to China. Both of them believe that China is the biggest threat to the United Kingdom and the world and therefore each of them has a plan to deal with China and there are several of them and one of the things that Sunak has announced just to embarrass his opponent that he is going to close down the so-called Confucius Institutes. No Confucius Institutes are kind of cultural centers established by China in many parts of the world including India. They start by teaching Chinese language and then they go on to teach culture about Confucius theories and basically doing some kind of brainwashing of foreigners and of course it is also an opportunity for us to understand them what their methodology is, the languages etc. So we also have some Confucius centers institutes but Sunak says that he is going to close them down and one of the points he made was that actually these were established at a time when Liz Truss was the Education Minister. So he's blaming her for having allowed Confucius Institutions to be set up. So when she says she is opposed to China, Sunak wants to undermine her by saying that look you are the one who brought these about and that's probably the reason why he picked up the Confucius Institutes to be closed down but both agree that they have to have a proper agenda to deal with China. The third issue is of course how to deal with Putin because that is what the biggest crisis that is facing Europe at this moment and then of course the pandemic what is the position of the pandemic, how much has Sunak done as Finance Minister to deal with the pandemic, how much has Liz Truss has done in order to give the right message to the world in which of course she failed because UK was one of the countries which was worst affected by the pandemic. So there each one will say we did what is possible. And then there was this funny issue of clothing of Rishi Sunak. There have been several videos etc saying that this man is spending a lot of money on his clothes as you know he's very rich man, he's a millionaire himself and his wife is supposed to be a billionaire daughter of Sri Murthy. So there were some stories that she's not paying taxes, she's keeping her money outside UK and Finance Minister's wife doing a kind of like this thing. There are some lot of hate mail and hate TV videos etc were in circulation and the clothes story is that somebody said that he's spending too much on his clothes and this is not in the tradition of Prime Ministers and then somebody said that but look Liz Truss, her jewelry are bought on the streets of London while the Rishi Sunak suits are made in several row, the most expensive suits in the world. But Liz Truss did not walk into this trap so she immediately said well I respect Mr. Sunak's taste, design her clothes and so on is a well-dressed man. So she did not get dragged into you know how cheap her earrings are. You know such things happen in debates of this kind. Do you remember at one time an Angela Merkel was accused of using unfashionable clothes because she was from East Germany from a workers' background and all her life even as Chancellor for many years she did not wear very stylish clothes and Angela Merkel said well I'm only the Chancellor of the country and not a fashion model she said. So there are so many different approaches to this. So from economic policy to the address of the candidates came up in the first debate but at the end of the debate they were very close and therefore there is no guarantee as to who will win the final election in August and become Prime Minister in September. So there are lots of difference individually though they belong to the same political party and they may have perhaps serve in the same cabinet in the future. It's quite possible that whoever wins may invite the other to join the cabinet but they are from the same party but it's surprising that they have so many difference of opinion about various things even though they belong to the same party. One of the conservative party leaders of the same party criticized both of them. They said that if they become they come to power either of them you had no particular choice and he said that this is very pure oil very childish kind of election campaign and if they do this we will lose the election later it's an embarrassing campaign and you know what he meant by it. He called it very childish and we have to raise the standards that is the advice of a conservative party and as far as the Labour Party is concerned they said they are very happy that these two either of them becoming prime ministers is good for the Labour Party because they can win the next elections. So as I said both were guts to be on equal footing and from taxation to those everything was discussed and then came the second debate that is where this calamity occurred while they were debating one of the commentators, analysts, well-known person she just collapsed while this class was speaking and there was a big noise and she immediately rushed to that person and she was recovering but they decided not to continue the debate so another debate will come we don't know exactly when and the second debate the China issue became very contentious because each one accused the other of being soft to the Chinese and also to point out who is more against the Chinese than the other so that they were vying with each other to be inimical to China and the both of them agreed that the biggest threat to the UK in the future is going to be China. It's not clear how much Sunat will push his four policy proposals he has made four point proposals about China. First I already mentioned to you to close what Confucius institutes in the UK then to build stronger diplomatic security alliance against China to use MI5 to help British business cooperation and to examine the ease of banning Chinese acquisitions or key British firms including strategically sensitive tech firms. So these are the four things that he wants to do. Tresverson was less firm in acknowledging the threat. She was not less firm. She also stressed the threat from China but she appeared defensive because of her past report so she had to repeatedly say that I am also against China and as Prime Minister I will take action. Then the debate on their stand would be on Vladimir Putin if he turned off the gas supply to Europe which is a big risk. Rishi Sunat said that a year and a half ago he oversaw that the biggest armed forces uplifts at the end of the Cold War. So what he was saying was that the British army is quite capable of meeting any threat from Putin and he said I also worked with all my finance ministers to put in place a sanctions package the likes of which we have never seen. This we know NATO and the US has imposed very strong sanctions against Russia and he said that he will continue that. It requires toughness to stand up to him and it does require all of us to go through difficult times. Part of us standing up to Putin is realizing as a country what is that going to do to our energy bills and having the results to get through that. There's a lot of different ways we can stand up to him but certainly we must stand up and I will do that UK will do that under my leadership. Because Sunat said that Sunat's economic policy is wrong to which he said I think it is fair to ask the largest companies to pay more because my plans only apply to the largest companies. For smaller companies nothing is going to change. They are getting help to employ staff. They are getting tax cuts from that. President the price of food is a huge issue and this is a global crisis. We know it is being exacerbated by the crisis in Ukraine. Fertilizer is more expensive. Grain is more expensive. Feeding through to the cost farmers are having to pay and one thing I would use to reduce the red tape. It's also important we are resilient and we have a good food supply in the face of these global shocks and we are not solely dependent particularly on countries we can't trust. So then we use basically the tax cuts. He is for tax increase while she is in favor of not increasing the tax. And as for loyalty to Johnson, Sunat is far behind trust because it was his resignation which triggered Johnson's resignation. Trust continued to be the caretaker foreign secretary in Johnson's team and may even include Johnson in her cabinet if he wants to become a minister after the elections. He has been saying that he will become a Tory backpensher and he referred to the job of the Prime Minister as the best job in the world. So now he didn't want any other job he said but now there are reports that he is going to become the Secretary General of NATO which is a very good position. So there will be many more debates and interviews to come and these issues will come in different forms depending on the audience. They are going to travel to different parts of the UK and therefore stress the issues which are most prominent in those spots. But behind this particular election, there's the point that we must note as Indians, race may be an important factor no one wants to discuss. Nobody wants to raise this issue. Would you accept a non-European to be the Prime Minister of UK? Everybody is whispering but nobody is speaking out openly on that. But many people believe that behind this election there may be a factor of race and no one wants to discuss it in many ways. Sunak is British, may be more British than some others but his colour may well become a factor against him. This is because if Sunak becomes the Prime Minister it will be a big shift in UK politics as he'll be the first Prime Minister of Indian Oralism. Since the race is very close, this is the other race, the running election is very close. We do not know when the people will focus on this issue particularly in India are holding our breath. We also are not discussing it. We are not pretending as though we are not interested in this issue but I'm sure everybody is whispering to each other whether this will come true or not. But I presume that they are mature enough to touch these people as to who is best for them and they will not go on the basis of race. But you never know and anything can happen between now. So this is the position of UK elections and please follow it because in your examination naturally all these questions will arise of the UK politics which is very important. We should always be very skeptical about integrity of politicians whether they are in India or elsewhere because they operate in a different kind of circumstances. It's a matter of survival for them. For those of us who are outside politics watching it, it may look very silly and it may look very rational for some of them to behave like that. But there are of course very many politicians everywhere in the world including India who are considered very principled. Their integrity is assured and so on. But then they are criticized them because their integrity is so good they will not be of any use to us. If he is a friend of yours and if he doesn't talk to you for fear that he'll be accused of corruption then what is the use of having a friend? You know such questions are raised. So in the case of the you know the resignation of about 22 ministers there was a clear reason for it because Mr Johnson was behaving in a very strange manner in his personal life. Very many things I don't need to mention all this year which are scandalous and this was getting too much and Rishi Sunak felt that it doesn't matter even if the government falls he would resign and when he resigned 22 ministers resigned. That is very significant and that is why probably you thought that was a very principled move. Well it looked like a principled move at that time but now that when we see that among the conservative party itself there are so many differences of opinion. Presibly there was a gain behind us. Somebody was inspiring to change the government of State Johnson and to become Prime Minister it's quite possible. So there may be other factors and the first race factor came only later because nobody knew that someone of Indian origin will come up as a contender even though they had a good record and everything. So that's a new factor which may influence it but on the whole it's a very there cannot be a stronger democracy than UK even though they don't have a written constitution. So very strong democracy and what happens in UK gets reflected in other parts of the world. So in that sense they always stay with the constitution. They go through the proper procedures and they will elect the leader of the conservative party of the next prime minister for two years and the two-year term that four-year term is over then there'll be a new election and there is no guarantee that conservatives will come back or maybe a change. So you never know what the motives were but as long as the procedures are followed and the constitution is followed nobody can complain. Thank you very much.