‘This is a close contest’: ITV News political editor Robert Peston explains why none of the remaining candidates in the Tory leadership race can be sure of making the bottom two To use a sporting cliché, Penny Mordaunt has brought the Tory leadership election to life. The little-known former defense secretary came second in today’s first round, with 67 votes – 17 more than third-placed Liz Truss and 21 behind leader Sunak’s 88. And since the MP contest is all about finding the top two, Mordaunt will believe the momentum is with her – while Foreign Secretary Truss should be feeling uneasy. The question is whether the way Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries positioned Truss as the Boris’s-Revenge-on-Sunak candidate yesterday hurt or helped Truss. Either way, he has plenty of ground to make up. There are three big questions tonight. Firstly, where will the votes of the two knockout candidates, Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi, go tomorrow? My feeling is that more of Hunt’s 18 would go to Mordaunt, given her position in One Nation, than to Truss. And as for Zahawi’s supporters, and Zahawi himself, it’s a calculation I don’t yet feel capable of making. Second, we now enter the territory of ruthless and cynical play. For those Boris Johnson loyalists who want Sunak defeated at all costs, one question is whether to transfer their allegiance from Truss to Mordaunt – especially since recent polling (for example by YouGov) suggests that Sunak may struggle to defeat Mordaunt in the final run-off when Tory party members make the important decision about which of the two leading candidates will be party leader and prime minister. You’ll notice I’m making a bold assumption – which may not be true – that Sunak is very likely to reach the second round in the summer, as he only needs another 32 votes to reach the magic 120, which guarantees a place in the bottom two. So the question is whether he has enough supporters signed up or likely to turn up so that he can lend some of their votes to whichever candidate he feels more confident of winning in the final runoff. You may recall that when Boris Johnson became leader in 2019, he was so far ahead that he lent some votes to Jeremy Hunt, on the basis that he felt more confident of beating Hunt in the second round than third-placed Michael Gove. So the question for Sunak is whether he would rather face Truss or Mordad. What’s your bet? Rishi Sunak at the launch of his campaign for Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister. Credit: PA Finally, the other candidate who defied early expectations is Kemi Badenoch, whose resignation from the government last week – like Sunak’s – helped prompt Johnson’s resignation. She collected 40 votes, enough to be a major king maker, if not to make it all the way to the members’ vote stage. It is widely believed that she – and her most prominent supporter, Michael Gove – will end up backing Sunak. If that is correct, and if she and Gove have some influence over her other 38 backers, then Sunak can be sure of his place in the troops during those long summer weeks when members decide who will lead her UK government. UPDATE 19.11 I may have miscalculated. Speaking to Tory MPs, it appears a large number of Hunt’s 18 backers will go straight to Sunak. Want a quick and special update on the biggest news? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out what you need to know
