The candidate who gets the fewest votes or those who do not get at least 30 votes will be excluded from the second ballot to be held on Thursday.
London Thanasis Gavos
The list of potential successors to Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom has been narrowed down to eight, as the rest of the potential next Prime Ministers failed to gather the support of at least 20 MPs, as required by the rule set on Monday.
The first vote of the 358-member Conservative caucus on Wednesday features Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordant, Liz Truss, Tom Tugenhut, Jeremy Hunt, Suella Braverman, Kemi Beidenock and Nadeem Zahawi. Of the well-known names, former Health Minister Sajid Javid was left out.
The candidate who gets the fewest votes or those who do not get at least 30 votes will be excluded from the second ballot to be held on Thursday.
New votes will begin next Monday, if needed, to determine the final pair of candidates that will be put to the judgment of the approximately 200,000 members of the Conservative Party. After a postal voting process, the winner and next leader of the party and the country will be announced on September 5.
The latest bookmakers’ predictions give Mr Sunak a slight lead over Penny Mordant, followed by Liz Truss.
Rishi Sunak, 42, was born in Southampton to Indian parents who immigrated to Britain from East Africa. He was until last Tuesday Minister of Finance in the Johnson government. His was the second resignation in a row of 59 submitted by members of the government in the past week.
He is the only candidate to oppose the immediate tax cuts he imposed during his time in the Treasury, although at the official launch of his election campaign he said he would cut them as Prime Minister when the economic situation and the inflation. “It’s a matter of when, not if,” Mr Sunak said, deflecting criticism from his opponents, who all promise immediate cuts.
Mr Sunak is seen as a representative of the “soft right” in the Conservative Party and has methodically built a profile as a serious and modern politician with a very careful use of social media. He has been the one with the most public statements of support, but the most public criticism, mainly because of his tax policy and because he is seen to have undermined Boris Johnson.
Mr Sunak also faces questions over his fine for attending the partygate partygate meeting where Boris Johnson was also fined, as well as the revelation that his wealthy Indian heiress wife did not pay taxes in the UK, which she said will change.
There are also doubts about his appeal to ordinary people, as he is the only politician on this year’s Sunday Times list of the 250 richest people in the UK, a fortune he built as a hedge fund chief.
Penny Mordant, 49, was Defense Secretary during the final months of May’s government and is now Under Secretary for Trade Policy.
She has represented the portly constituency of Portsmouth since 2010 and her connection with the Royal Navy, as well as her family’s military background, gives her points in the patriotic Tory wing.
Her appeal in the right wing of the party is also strengthened by the support she gave to Brexit, as well as by the commitment to reduce taxes. At the same time, having stayed away from the political spotlight during Johnson’s premiership, it is considered that he has not been exposed like other candidates by the recent scandals. Indicatively, the most recent poll among members of the Conservative Party by the website Conservatives Home proves to be the most popular candidate.
She announced her candidacy with a stunning video, which she had to re-edit to remove footage of Oscar Pistorius and murdered MP Jo Cox. She is also accused of making contradictory statements on the issue of transgender women’s rights.
She became better known to non-political audiences with her 2014 appearance on the TV program Splash! in which celebrities competed in diving.
The 47-year-old Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is the main representative of the hard-right Tories, having won the support of Brexiteers among others. Although she herself had been in favor of remaining in the EU in 2016, she then warmly embraced Brexit.
She has won fans, but also received derision, for her attempt to present herself as a new Margaret Thatcher, both politically and image-wise, with official photos of her in locations or scenes similar to famous photos of the ‘Iron Lady’ » of British politics.
Her advantage is considered to be her experience, as she has been a minister in the governments of Cameron, May and Johnson, but also her tough stance towards Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. However, at the beginning of his political career he had a reputation as a politician who lacks substance.
Tom Tugenhut, 49, is the spokesman for the so-called One Nation group of Conservative MPs, who are roughly positioned on the centre-left wing of the party.
He holds the position of chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the House of Commons and is considered a moderate and serious politician, who however has not been tried in a ministry.
He likes to recall his military past, having served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is competing with Penny Mordant for the vote of the “patriotic” wing of the party.
He holds dual citizenship, thanks to his French mother.
55-year-old Jeremy Hunt represents the centrist and moderate wing of the party. He was the most outspoken opponent of Brexit among the candidates, but has said that if elected to replace Boris Johnson, he would appoint hawkish Brexiteer Esther McVey as Deputy Prime Minister, in an apparent bid to broaden his appeal in the caucus.
In 2019 he lost in the final vote of Conservative Party members to Boris Johnson, who thus succeeded Theresa May.
Mr. Hunt has served as Minister of Health (for six years) and Secretary of State, among others. He is seen by others as a safe choice, but for others in the party he is a “cold” politician who does not win over voters.
He also supports tax cuts, but in a more gradual way than other candidates.
Suella Braverman, 42, who serves as Attorney General in the Johnson administration, is perhaps the most right-wing candidate in the succession race.
Known for her very strong support for Brexit, she was for a time chair of the European Research Group of the Eurosceptic wing of Conservative MPs. As he has stated, “the Conservatives are fighting against cultural Marxism”. She announced her candidacy by citing tax cuts, tackling illegal immigration and getting rid of “the trappings of political correctness” as priorities.
Her parents are of Indian origin with roots in Mauritius and immigrated to Britain from Kenya in the 1960s. As she said in asking for her colleagues’ votes in the succession race, “don’t vote for me because I’m a woman or because I’m brown, vote for me because I love this country”.
It is estimated that he is vying for MP votes from the same pool as Liz Truss.
From the same pool of votes, the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Faith and Communities Kemi Beydenok, the least known of the eight names of the contenders, will try to draw.
With positions that satisfy the Tories’ most conservative wing on areas such as taxation, social policy, the “culture war” and immigration, the 42-year-old Nigerian-born politician surprised by winning the support of Michael Gove, former minister with great influence in the party.
The eighth candidate is the one-week Minister of Finance Nadim Zahawi, who very quickly rose to one of the top posts in the government. He is credited with the successful coronavirus vaccine program as deputy secretary of state, but faces criticism for turning against Boris Johnson a day after accepting the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Amidst rumors and allegations, he has also been forced to deny that he has avoided paying taxes or declaring assets in Britain through offshore financial schemes. In 2013 he was pardoned when it emerged that he had billed voters by putting the cost of heating his stables on his parliamentary expenses.
Mr. Zahawi is considered to belong to the right wing of the party.
The 55-year-old politician of Kurdish origin came to Britain with his relatively affluent family as a political refugee from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq when he was nine, speaking no English. He turned out to be a successful entrepreneur, co-founding the polling company YouGov among other things.
He has come into direct confrontation with his predecessor Rishi Sunak, arguing that tax cuts must be made immediately, despite warnings of rising inflationary pressures.
With the presence in the final eight of Mr. Sunak, Braverman, Beidenock and Zahawi 50% of the candidates for the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom come from an ethnic minority.
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