Anger as UK's Truss ducks interview

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has been criticized for pulling out of a high-profile BBC interview just before the end of the race for the country's next prime minister.

Truss and former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak are the last two candidates in the contest to replace Boris Johnson, who in July announced his intention to leave office. The search for his replacement has dominated the UK political landscape all summer, despite issues such as the fuel bill crisis.

Sunak was interviewed by BBC correspondent Nick Robinson on Aug 10, and Truss was scheduled to do the same on Tuesday. But at short notice, her team said "she can no longer spare the time", according to a BBC statement.

Robinson tweeted that he was "disappointed and frustrated" by the news after both candidates had agreed to take part.

Truss is widely expected to emerge as the winner after voting by grassroots Conservative party members ends on Sept 2, but there is concern that she could enter Downing Street without having faced any major public test of her credentials.

The scenario is similar to how Johnson guided the Conservatives to victory in the 2019 general election despite being the only major party leader who declined to allow himself to face a thorough examination of his policies and personality at the hands of another major political interviewer, Andrew Neil.

"We need a prime minister with the courage to stand up to dictators, not one who runs scared from political journalists," tweeted the opposition Labour Party's shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, while former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said Truss' evasiveness "speaks of cowardice, insecurity, arrogance, or a combination of all three".

Whoever replaces Johnson will be the third consecutive Conservative leader to become prime minister without being voted in by the public.

In 2016, Theresa May replaced David Cameron when he stood down following the Brexit referendum. Less than 12 months later, she gambled on holding a general election to force through her Brexit deal, but ended up reducing the parliamentary majority she had inherited, making her problems worse.

May resigned in July 2019, and was replaced by Johnson, who beat Jeremy Hunt in the head-to-head contest. Facing the same problems of a deadlocked Parliament that May had, Johnson called an election in December 2019 on a promise to "get Brexit done" and won a large majority. But within months, the coronavirus pandemic emerged, transforming the global political agenda.

Johnson's personal conduct during the pandemic was one of the factors that contributed to colleagues losing faith in him, as well as two Conservative by-election defeats, culminating in his departure.

The candidate replacing him faces a daunting workload, with the fuel bill crisis growing by the day, a likely seasonal resurgence of COVID-19 cases coming, and many unresolved issues around Brexit.