Britain's next prime minister will take office on Sept. 6. Boris Johnson's replacement will be either Foreign Secretary Liz Truss or former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.
Sunak and Truss came in a respective first and second in the final poll of Conservative parliamentarians on Wednesday. They will now travel the United Kingdom trying to persuade Conservative Party members to give them the keys to No. 10 Downing Street.
Because the Conservatives have a parliamentary majority, whoever wins the Conservative leadership contest will automatically become prime minister. No general election need be called until late 2024.
From the perspective of U.S. interests, Truss would be the preferable prime minister.
While Truss was seen as somewhat unsure when she became foreign secretary last September, she has grown into the role impressively. Truss has worked very closely with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to introduce sanctions on Russia. Indeed, Truss has been more forward-leaning than the Biden administration, seeking to expand the supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine. Truss's unrepentant condemnations of Russia stand in stark contrast with the far more hesitant stances of her European Union counterparts in Berlin, Brussels, Madrid, Rome, and Paris. This has earned Truss the rising ire of Russian state media.
Should she become prime minister, Truss has pledged to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP by 2030. That would mean very significant investments in Britain's ability to complement U.S. military operations. And that brings us to the keystone U.S. national security concern: China.
Shredding a long-held Foreign Office taboo, Truss recently called for expanded Western efforts to support Taiwan. She has also criticized China's human rights policies and made clear that she wants Britain to take a greater role in support of its allies in the Pacific. While the historic relationship between Britain, Australia, and the United States is a guiding force for Truss, her interest in boosting ties with Japan and India also seems clear.
Truss views the world through the prism of a democratic struggle against increasingly determined autocracies. There is a Thatcherite quality here. In turn, a Truss premiership would likely see increasing Royal Navy deployments to the East and South China Seas, possibly to include 12-mile transits of China's unlawfully claimed islands. Truss would also increase the British commitment to NATO, helping to reduce pressure on the U.S. military.
Sunak sees things quite differently. He wants a far more commercially minded foreign policy toward China. As recently as January, Sunak sought a "complete sea change" in U.K. relations with Beijing. He wants to boost trade ties at the expense of other concerns and has condemned those calling for a tougher China policy as lacking "nuance." Beijing has made clear that Sunak's stance is music to its ears. The Chinese Communist Party wants to leverage trade as a means of extracting political concessions in other areas.
If Sunak becomes prime minister, you can bet that China will quickly offer massive investments — but only with the expectation that Sunak will stay quiet on the Uyghur genocide, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, keep the British military out of the Pacific, open up sensitive U.K. industries to Chinese ownership, and only minimally support the U.S. on other related concerns. This would see Sunak return to the strategy of former Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Obsorne, who declared a "golden era" in U.K.-China relations. To the chagrin of the queen, they even tolerated Chinese insults of British diplomats and police officers assigned to protect Xi Jinping during his 2015 state visit.
Sunak's resistance to U.K. defense spending tells a similar tale. Even as recently as late March, a month after Russia had commenced the biggest European war since 1945, Sunak was resisting defense spending boosts. It is another sign that his premiership would put mercantilism first.
The choice is up to Conservative members. But U.S. interests seem much better suited to a Prime Minister Truss.
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