Rishi Sunak came top in the fourth round of voting on Tuesday in the Tory leadership contest, followed by Penny Mordaunt with 92 and Liz Truss with 86.
The former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch, who got 59 votes, has been knocked out, ahead of the fifth and final round on Wednesday which will determine which two candidates are put to a postal vote by between 160,000-180,000 Tory party members in the country at large.
With 358 Tory MPs in the Commons, Sunak’s supporters were hoping he would get to the magic number of 120 which would guarantee him a place in the run-off. In the event he picked up only three more votes, having got 115 in the third round.
The battle for second place is now really between Mordaunt, a trade minister, and Truss, the foreign secretary. Mordaunt’s vote went up from 82 to 92, while Truss increased hers from 71 to 86. They will try to target the MPs who have so far backed Badenoch.
Out of 358 MPs, there was one spoilt paper. Another MP, Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defence select committee, was barred from voting for failing to support Boris Johnson’s government in a confidence motion on Monday.
He had his “whip removed” and cannot take any further part in the voting process. Incidentally, the motion, introduced by the government, was carried by 349 votes to 238, a majority of 111.
This will allow Boris to remain Prime Minister until September 5 when his successor will be announced. It is now just possible that when it comes to the last two, Truss will get more votes than Sunak.
Although nothing can be taken for granted, the fight for the job of Prime Minister will probably be between Sunak and Truss, with the two most powerful Tory newspapers, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, backing the latter to the hilt.
The odds are stacked against Sunak, who is hoping to be the UK’s first Prime Minister from an ethnic minority background. However, Sunak is good at making his case.
He is also recognised as being the most qualified of all the candidates but the right wing will try and pull him down. Kate Maltby, a columnist, told the BBC: “The contest so far has been very nasty with a lot of personal attacks.” If anything, it will get nastier.
The two remaining candidates will appear in a BBC debate, Our Next Prime Minister. Joining presenter Sophie Raworth on the show will be BBC political editor Chris Mason and BBC economics editor Faisal Islam, who will be providing their analysis of the candidates’ answers.
The show will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 5 Live with coverage continuing after the debate and across the BBC News website and the BBC News Channel. The BBC will also invite the final two candidates to each take part in a one-on-one interview with Nick Robinson in a special TV programme, Our Next Prime Minister: The Interviews.
