Three candidates pull ahead as race to replace Boris Johnson heats up
London: Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are leading the race to replace Boris Johnson as UK prime minister after a second round of voting knocked out one of the Brexiteer candidates.
The sun set on the campaign of Suella Braverman, the attorney-general, after she failed to meet the 30-vote threshold of MPs’ votes required to make it through to the next round.
Nadhim Zahawi (top right), Jeremy Hunt (bottom left) and Suella Braverman (bottom right) have been eliminated from the Tory leadership contest. Still in the running are (top): Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch, and (bottom) Tom Tugendhat and Liz Truss.Credit:Getty Images (photo digitally altered)
That leaves five candidates in the race, but Tom Tugendhat – who is backed by the chair of the more moderate One Nation group of MPs – like Braverman, also lost votes between Wednesday’s first vote and the second round, only just scraping across the line with 32 votes.
Kemi Badenoch, who is the darling of the Conservatives’ ultra-right wing, is also lagging with just 49 votes.
Sunak, the frontrunner, was the only candidate to secure more than 100 votes and needs just 19 more to automatically qualify for a final head-to-head run-off.
He is likely to face either Penny Mordaunt or Liz Truss, the foreign secretary and a close friend of Australia’s former high commissioner to the UK, George Brandis.
Mordaunt is beloved by the membership and is the candidate Sunak would least want to face. Her stocks continued to rise among MPs as she earned 83 votes compared to 63 for Truss.
A remainer who has rebadged herself as a Brexiteer, Truss has served in cabinet under Johnson, David Cameron and Theresa May.
She launched her leadership campaign on Thursday and promised to get the British economy on an upward trajectory by 2024.
Truss acknowledged that times would be tough until then, but she promised to be honest with the public.
She said that both the opposition Labour Party and the smaller Liberal Democrats were beatable as there was no groundswell of support for “Sir Keir Starmer or Sir Ed Davey” – an apparent attempt to contrast their establishment profiles with her working-class image.
Truss pointed to the post-Brexit trade deal struck with Australia as one of many achievements that qualified her for Number 10.
The five candidates will now take part in televised debates ahead of the next round of voting on Monday. The final two are expected to be known by July 21.
They will spend the summer campaigning for support from Conservative Party members, who will vote by post. The winner is expected to be announced by September 5.
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