Jeremy Hunt, former health secretary, and chancellor Nadhim Zahawi failed to meet the required level of 30 Tory MPs backing them to go through to the next round of voting in the contest to replace Boris Johnson as UK prime minister. Six candidates are now left in the race. Sunak won 88 votes, with 67 for trade secretary Penny Mordaunt, 50 for foreign secretary Liz Truss, 40 for former equalities secretary Kemi Badenoch, 37 for foreign affairs select committee chair Tom Tugendhat and 32 for attorney-general Suella Braverman. A Sunak ally said the former chancellor came first because he has “the clearest plan for restoring confidence, rebuilding the economy, reuniting the country and because he is best placed to defeat Labor at the next election”. Campaign spokesman Sunak added: “MPs also recognize that Rishi has the best experience and plans to deal with the current financial situation. Rishi will rebuild our economy by containing inflation and getting our economy growing quickly again.” Mordaunt officially launched her campaign on Wednesday morning with a pledge to return to traditional Tory values of “low taxation, little government and personal responsibility”. The middle-ranking trade minister said her low-tax, small-state, strong defense platform would help restore a “sense of self” to the party. “We don’t need a new role in the world – just to be ourselves,” he added. Her campaign was boosted by a YouGov poll of grassroots Tory party members just hours earlier, which put her well ahead of all other candidates in a final run-off. Her chances of winning the contest were reduced after the poll suggested she would beat Sunak by 58% to 31%. The leadership process will whittle down the candidates by next week to a final pair who will then battle it out for the support of more than 100,000 Tory members ahead of a vote in early September. The first televised debates of the contest will take place on Friday and Sunday with the five candidates expected to remain in the race after one more candidate was eliminated in another round of voting on Thursday.
