Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, has come top again in the second round of voting on Thursday in the Tory leadership contest after getting 101 votes, with junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt and foreign secretary Liz Truss in second and third place with 83 and 64 respectively.
The Goan origin attorney-general Suella Braverman has been knocked out. The fourth and fifth places were taken by former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch and the chairman of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat, with 49 and 32 votes respectively.
Over the weekend they will come under pressure to quit the race and urge their supporters to throw in their lot with one of the three remaining candidates. Out of 358 Tory MPs eligible to vote, 356 took part. Nothing is certain but at this stage, the final two may turn to be Sunak and Mordaunt.
What is clear is that the Right wing of the Conservative Party and its backers in their media are doing their best to undermine Sunak. In the first round on Wednesday, Sunak was top with 83 votes to Mordaunt’s 67. The Daily Telegraph’s page one headline on Thursday read: “Mordaunt seizes the momentum after first Tory ballot.”
It was claimed Mordaunt was way ahead of Sunak when it came to the 180,000 Tory party members who will choose the next leader and Prime Minister to succeed Boris Johnson. On LBC, various “callers” ran the talk station to express their admiration for her politics — and also remarked on her stunning beauty. On Thursday, the Daily Mail’s political editor, Jason Groves, suggested things were not going Sunak’s way. He wrote: “Rishi Sunak failed to deliver a knockout blow last night, leaving the race to succeed Boris Johnson wide open.
The former chancellor topped the first-round ballot of Tory MPs but did not manage to establish the kind of unassailable early lead seen when Mr Johnson seized the crown in 2019. “Mr Sunak has been the hot favourite to win the backing of Tory MPs. But in a secret ballot yesterday he got a slightly underwhelming 88 votes, ahead of Penny Mordaunt on 67 and Liz Truss on 50. “His tally amounts to just under a quarter of Tory MPs and will alarm those on his team hoping that he would be out of sight after the first round.
“By contrast, Mr Johnson crushed his opponents in the first round in 2019, taking 114 votes to Jeremy Hunt’s 43. Tory MPs with long memories were last night recalling the 2001 leadership contest when Michael Portillo took a narrow first-round lead but ended up being dumped out in subsequent rounds after his campaign stalled.” Groves added: “Mr Sunak’s team were last night putting a brave face on things, pointing out that it was no mean achievement to secure a quarter of the vote in a crowded field of eight candidates. “He is still well-placed to make the final two candidates who will then go forward to a vote by Conservative Party activists next month. But he cannot yet be certain.”
