Conservative MPs in Britain on Thursday eliminated one of the six remaining candidates to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as frontrunner Rishi Sunak worked to fend off momentum from surprise challenger Penny Mordaunt. Attorney General Suella Braverman secured the fewest votes of her colleagues, 27, and was eliminated from the race, leaving five contenders. Sunak, who resigned as head of Britain’s Treasury last week, received the most votes, 101, with junior trade secretary Mordaunt second on 83. Bookmaker Ladbrokes said Mordaunt was now the favourite. to win the leadership election, followed by Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who got 64 votes. Former Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch, a rising star on the party’s libertarian right, and centrist MP Tom Tugendhat remain in the race — although Tugendhat got just 32 votes and is under pressure to drop out. Tugendhat, however, said he will compete and participate in the candidates’ televised debates on Friday, Sunday and Monday. Further rounds of voting by the 358 Tory MPs will take place from Monday until just two candidates remain. The final two candidates will face a second round of voting by around 180,000 Conservative Party members across the country. The winner is scheduled to be announced on September 5 and will automatically become prime minister, without the need for a national election. Truss is trying to shore up support from lawmakers on the party’s right, who distrust Sunak’s high spending to support people and businesses during the coronavirus pandemic and the tax hikes he brought in as COVID-19 hit the economy of Britain. In a campaign launch speech, Truss cited her international experience of rallying support for Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion and striking deals with other countries in her previous role as trade secretary. He said he would put Britain’s economy on an “upward trajectory” by 2024, the deadline for the next national election. Sunak argues that the immediate tax cuts promised by his opponents are reckless amid economic shockwaves from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. He said his “number one economic priority is to tackle inflation” — forecast to reach 11 percent later this year — before cutting taxes. Sunak has also faced allegations that he is out of touch with the struggles of ordinary people because of his wealth. He is a former investment banker and his wife is the daughter of the billionaire founder of Indian technology company Infosys. “I don’t judge people by their bank accounts. I judge them by their characters,” Sunak told the BBC. “And I think people can judge me by my actions over the last two years.” The contest was sparked when Johnson stepped down as Tory leader last week after government ministers began resigning en masse amid months of ethics scandals. He will remain in office as caretaker prime minister until his replacement is chosen as party leader. Truss had been seen as the front-runner, but he won fewer votes on both Wednesday and Thursday than Mordaud, who scores highly in polls among party members. Unlike Sunak and Truss, Mordaunt did not hold a senior position in Johnson’s government, although she was a junior minister. A likeable politician from a military family, she is widely seen as a breath of fresh air. Despite calls from party officials to keep the campaign upbeat, supporters of the respective candidates are strongly attacking the experience and ability of the contest. Former Brexit negotiator David Frost, a hard-line Eurosceptic and Truss ally, said Mordant could not be trusted to maintain the stable Brexit terms favored by his Conservative wing. He claimed that when Mordaunt was his deputy in the Brexit negotiations, she “wouldn’t always give tough signals to the European Union when that was necessary”. Legislator David Davis, a Mordaunt supporter, criticized the negative campaign. “It’s absolutely clockwork,” he said. “You get to the point where someone catches up and seems to be the real challenger and then … the oncoming fire starts.”
