The race to update Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and British minister is reduced to five candidates after the vote circular among Conservative MPs on Thursday.
While former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak leads the way with his fellow MPs, Penny Mordaunt, secondly, interrogates party members, who will ultimately be the winner.
The UK’s Indian finance minister and Britain’s richest MP Sunak resigned last week and said he would do so 3 days later.
Rishi Sunak resigned as finance minister week Photo: AFP/Daniel LEAL
Sunak, 42, announced his crusade on Tuesday and said he would not “demonize” outgoing Johnson despite helping to cause his disappearance.
His star rose during his first term as finance minister, overseeing the licensing program that subsidized staff during the coronavirus pandemic.
He has long been Johnson’s most likely successor, but his popularity has plummeted recently amid runaway inflation and doubts about his personal fortune and his family’s tax arrangements.
Sunak, who subsidized Brexit in the 2016 referendum, made millions in finance rather than politics, and his Indian wife’s father, Akshata Murty, co-founded IT giant Infosys.
Penny Mordaunt the first woman to be British Defence Secretary Photo: AFP/ISABEL INFANTES
Its obvious reluctance to adopt quick tax cuts may also hurt its prospects, while recent surveys among members have also shown it lags behind its main competitors.
Mordaunt, 49, is lately the favorite to win the entire contest because of his perceived popularity among the party’s base.
Several recent polls have shown her beating all other contenders in the latest proposed circular to members.
Foreign Minister Liz Truss is popular with the conservative base Photo: POOL AFP/Ben STANSALL
However, those investigations can be very volatile and little is known about Mordaunt, despite being the first existing female Secretary of Defense and Minister of Commerce.
After a successful launch of the crusade on Wednesday, it collapsed on Thursday when David Frost, the government’s former Brexit spokesman who remains influential among grassroots Conservatives, put forward a scathing attack.
Mordaunt, a staunch Brexiteer and a key figure in the 2016 “Leave” campaign, however, Frost told TalkTV he would “have serious reservations” about his nomination as boss.
“I’m afraid she wasn’t completely responsible, she wasn’t visible. Sometimes I didn’t even know where she was,” he said of his paintings with her on post-Brexit relations with the EU last year.
Conservative MP Olukemi Badenoch has one of the lowest profiles of the existing candidates Photo: UK PARLIAMENT AFP/Chris McAndrew
The former assistant to the magician promised to return to conservative policies of “low taxes, small, non-public state responsibility” and “relentless attention to life-related matters. “
Foreign Secretary Truss presented her crusade on Thursday, highlighting her credentials on Brexit and Ukraine and promising tax cuts.
He highlighted his competence in economic issues in the context of the existing cost-of-living crisis after serving in the Ministry of Finance.
The 46-year-old has attracted Brexit-backing Johnson loyalists in the cabinet and is popular with Conservative members for her candor.
But she also raised questions about her trial, for example, when in February she was fighting in Ukraine.
Despite high-level support, he has failed to rally pro-Brexit MPs around him.
Critics say his leadership stance has been too open and his principles, having campaigned against Brexit in 2016 and then allied with the Conservative right.
When she ran the Department of International Trade, some lawmakers dubbed her the “Department of Instagramming Truss” for her prolific production on the social media site.
Former Equality Minister Badenoch, who resigned last week, the marvel of the campaign, emerged from relative obscurity to see high-profile candidates such as former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Finance Minister Nadhim Zahawi.
The 42-year-old, who spent her formative years in Nigeria, is a harsh critic of “identity politics,” a Brexiteer and a staunch defender of conservatism.
His crusade gained momentum with the approval of conservative heavyweight Michael Gove.
The prominent MP who chairs the parliament’s influential foreign affairs committee, the first to put forward his candidacy.
A former army officer who served in the Middle East, he is a hawk against China and has criticized the government’s handling of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.
The 49-year-old pledged to spend 3. 0 of GDP on defense when he filed his crusade on Tuesday.