The first ballot of Conservative MPs has confirmed Rishi Sunak’s position as the leading candidate and boosted Penny Mordaunt’s prospects of joining him in a two-person contest for the votes of the entire party membership. Liz Truss’s performance was disappointing as she split the right-wing vote with Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman but she remains a serious threat to both of the frontrunners.
Tom Tugendhat can expect to benefit from the elimination of Jeremy Hunt and Nadhim Zahawi but the pool of votes available to him is probably too shallow to allow him to progress far beyond Thursday’s ballot. Neither Badenoch nor Braverman is likely to overtake Truss, so the contest is heading towards a three-horse race.
Sunak’s 88 votes are a meagre haul compared with the 114 Boris Johnson won from a smaller parliamentary party on the first ballot in 2019. But the former chancellor’s frontrunner status is remarkable given that he was all but written off as a contender earlier this year after a controversy over his wife’s tax affairs.
Sunak, backed by the four most recent former chief whips, remains the candidate most likely to secure a place on the ballot of party members. But if the right unites behind Truss, she could yet push either Sunak or Mordaunt out of the way.
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Mordaunt has been the star of the contest so far, emerging on top in two successive polls of party members and bringing a fresh quality to the race. A Brexiteer and a naval reservist, she launched her campaign with a video to the soundtrack of I Vow to Thee my Country and promises a return to traditional Conservative values.
But Mordaunt is liberal on social issues, and her rivals have sought to use her record of support for LGBT rights against her. So far the attacks have not damaged her and, as the most transfer-friendly of the three leading candidates, she can expect to benefit from the elimination of those trailing the field.
Truss’s headache is that neither Braverman and Badenoch show any sign of withdrawing gracefully in her favour and she cannot be sure of picking up the bulk of their supporters after they are eliminated. Some of Braverman’s fellow hardliners in the European Research Group could not vote for anyone who did not back Brexit in 2016.
And Badenoch’s embrace of the culture wars has won her a disparate following, particularly among the more recent parliamentary intakes, whose second choice is unpredictable.