Former chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak remains ahead in the race for the Conservative Party leadership after a second round of voting saw attorney general Suella Braverman eliminated and reduced the field to five. Mr Sunak won 101 votes from his fellow MPs, ahead of trade minister Penny Mordaunt on 83 and foreign secretary Liz Truss on 64.
Former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch won 49 votes and foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Tugendhat saw his share fall to 32. Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and former health secretary Jeremy Hunt were eliminated in the first vote on Wednesday.
The remaining five candidates go forward to a third ballot on Monday, and further votes will be held next week until the final two are selected to go before the entire party membership.
Thursday’s vote gave a boost to Mr Sunak and Ms Mordaunt, who has become the bookies’ favourite after two polls of Conservative Party members put her in the lead. Ms Truss failed to narrow the gap between her and the two front-runners but her team expressed confidence that Ms Braverman’s supporters would move behind the foreign secretary.
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“Obviously, she and her supporters will have to have time to reflect, and we should always give people the time and the space of the result,” chief secretary to the treasury Simon Clarke said.
Sources close to the attorney general told the PA news agency on Thursday night that Ms Braverman would come out in support of Ms Truss.
The five candidates have agreed to take part in a televised debate on Friday, according to Channel 4. A second debate is scheduled on Sky News on Sunday. Although Mr Tugendhat won five fewer votes on Thursday than he did on Wednesday, his spokesperson said he would remain in the race.
“Tom is in it to win it. He can’t wait to set out his positive vision for Britain and offer the party, and more importantly the country, the clean start we need,” the spokesperson said.
At the formal launch of her campaign on Thursday, Ms Truss faced questions about her supporters’ hostile briefing against other candidates. Former Brexit minister David Frost, who is understood to support Ms Truss, on Thursday launched an attack on Ms Mordaunt, who served as his deputy for part of the Brexit negotiations.
“I felt she did not master the detail that was necessary in the negotiations last year. She wouldn’t always deliver tough messages to the European Union when that was necessary. And I’m afraid she wasn’t sort of fully accountable,” he told TalkTV.
“She wasn’t always visible. Sometimes I didn’t even know where she was. And I’m afraid this became such a problem that, after six months, I had to ask the prime minister to move her on and find somebody else to support me.”
Mr Sunak’s critics have suggested that his great personal wealth has left him out of touch with the struggles of most of his fellow citizens as the cost-of-living crisis bites. He said on Thursday that he should be judged by his actions as chancellor of the exchequer rather than by his own bank account.
“Whenever I have needed to step in to support people I have, and furlough is a fantastic example of that. But what I would say as a Conservative is I believe in hard work and aspiration, and that’s my story, and if I’m prime minister then I’ll be making the case for that with vigour,” he told the BBC.
