On Wednesday, former chancellor Rishi Sunak got the most votes (88) in the first round of voting by Conservative Party MPs, which cut the number of candidates from eight to six. This gave him a bigger lead in the race for UK prime minister.
Attorney General Suella Braverman, who is also of Indian descent, has the least votes (32), coming in behind Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt (67), Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (50), former minister Kemi Badenoch (40), and backbencher Tom Tugendhat (37 votes).
Nadhim Zahawi, who was just named chancellor, and Jeremy Hunt, who used to be a Cabinet minister, are no longer in the running. With 25 and 18 supporters, respectively, they did not get the support of at least 30 MPs.
Penny Mordaunt seems to be getting more support from Conservative Party members, who will have the final say, but Sunak, who is 42 years old, has kept a steady lead among his Conservative parliamentary colleagues since he announced last week that he was running for party leadership.
Sunak, who is Narayana Murthy’s son-in-law, told the BBC that he is “glad” with how the first round of voting turned out.
Even though the field is still thought to be wide open, it looks like Sunak, Mordaunt, and Liz Truss are going to fight it out for the lead at this early stage of the race.
On Thursday, the 358 Conservative members of Parliament will vote for their favourite candidates still on the ballot. This will narrow the list of candidates even further, leaving only a few finalists.
The 1922 Committee, which is made up of Tory backbenchers, has set July 21 as the date by which the list of candidates must be cut down to just two.
Then, the Conservative Party headquarters will take over the process and set up a series of hustings in different parts of the UK for the last two candidates to tell the estimated 200,000 Conservative Party members about their campaign plans.
On September 5, the person who gets the most votes will replace Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of Britain.
In the meantime, a Truss spokesperson said, “Colleagues need to come together behind the candidate who will lower taxes, bring about the real economic change we need right away, and make sure Putin loses in Ukraine.
