THE Conservative leadership hustings have been an opportunity for candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak to set out what their priorities would be if they are crowned Prime Minister.

We’ve heard a lot about culture wars and defending society against the woke brigade, but not so much about the cost of living emergency that threatens to plunge millions of people into fuel and food poverty over the next few months.

Truss says she will “hit the ground running” if she moves into Number 10. Rishi Sunak promises he will be responsible with the nation’s finances. Which is Tory code for “The plebs can eat porridge”.

Money saving expert Martin Lewis has warned a “financial cataclysm” will hit the UK with energy prices set to rise by 77% in October.

With the average household annual bill due to rise to an eye-watering £3500, you would think the candidates’ plans to tackle would top the agenda for their pitch to Tory members. But it seems as though both wannabes are content to carry on where their boss left off. The Conservative leadership contest has been characterised by that old Boris trick of style over substance.

You could probably heat a few hundred homes with the money they’ve likely spent on presentation training. Sunak in particular has developed a grating, dumbed-down style of speaking. Which reveals a lot about what he thinks about the electorate he is trying to win votes from.

As the favourite, Truss doesn’t have to try quite so hard. Which is lucky for us, because the last time she injected her full personality into a speech she ended up doing a viral monologue about cheese and pork.

The anti-immigration, anti-regulation, pro-business rhetoric we’ve heard from both is red meat for the Tory base. But nothing excites the party’s members quite as much as anti-independence soundbites and the candidates have happily obliged.

Tories love to hear that Scotland will be put in its place and that any attempts to escape the precious Union will be thwarted.

Rishi Sunak has promised to be “firm” with Nicola Sturgeon if she requests his support for a second independence referendum. I’m sure the First Minister is quaking in her boots. She’ll be about as intimidated by the strong-arm rhetoric as she was when the last three UK prime ministers she’s worked alongside told her the same thing.

Truss has gone even further.

To her credit, she has at least dropped the pretence of being open-minded.

She’s not saying “now is not the time”, she’s saying it will never be the time, regardless of what voters in Scotland want or how they vote in an election. She says she will do “what is necessary and what is right” to defend the Union.

Truss said that any independence referendum would need to be authorised by Westminster and pledged that if she becomes prime minister: “I will not grant that authority”.

Such an unyielding and uncompromising stance will no doubt be celebrated by Unionists. But at what cost?

Boris Johnson leaving office has been cited as a reason why support for Scottish independence might begin to fall away.

The theory is that the Yes movement has lost its bogeyman, and once a “reasonable” Tory is chosen to replace him, Scots won’t feel so inclined to quickly leave the UK via the nearest available exit.

Truss has just destroyed that argument. There are no reasonable Conservative leadership candidates, only those who are intent on continuing to deny democracy.

Despite the justifications put forward by pro-Union politicians, the decision to block indyref2 has always been a political decision, not a moral or democratic one.

The same people who argue that the SNP’s mandate for indyref2 is invalid because they didn’t win over 50% of the popular vote at the last Scottish Parliament election make no such claim about the democratic legitimacy of the current UK Government.

In 2019, the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority and with it, the power to implement their manifesto. But they didn’t reach the magic 50% vote share either, yet still they parrot the line that their mandate is solid while the mandate for indyref2 doesn’t exist.

I suspect that Prime Minister Truss would be as useful a recruiting sergeant for the indyref cause as Johnson was. She will carry on where the mad king left off, alienating Scots voters and disproving the notion that the UK is a voluntary union of equal nations.