The UK’s next prime minister will be either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss, after Penny Mordaunt was eliminated from the battle for the Conservative leadership in the final round of voting by the party’s MPs.
After leading the race to succeed from the start, Mr Sunak held onto his first place with137 MPs’ votes.
But Ms Mordaunt, who was second in the four previous rounds of voting, was dramatically overtaken at the last minute by Ms Truss, who took 113 votes to the trade minister’s 105.
The foreign secretary is believed to have benefited from switching by former supporters of Kemi Badenoch after she was knocked out on Tuesday.
Sunak and Truss will be the names on ballot papers being sent out from 1 August to approximately 160,000 Tory members, who will choose their new leader – and the country’s prime minister – in a secret ballot, with the result to be announced on 5 September.
Ms Truss goes into the crucial tournament as firm bookies’ favourite, after repeated surveys of Conservative activists gave her a comfortable lead over the former chancellor in a head-to-head contest.
Ms Mordaunt’s elimination sets the scene for a bloody summer of blue-on-blue attacks between the two former cabinet colleagues, which senior Tories fear could damage the party’s brand.
The pair have clashed viciously in TV debates, with Ms Truss accusing the former chancellor of putting the UK on the path to recession and him asking whether she was more embarrassed to be a former Remainer or a former Liberal Democrat.
Their next encounter will be an hour-long BBC debate on Monday, followed by a regional hustings in the North of England next Thursday.
Conservatives who have been a member of the party since at least 3 June can cast their votes online as soon as they are received at the start of next month, making the coming week crucial in the fight to be PM.
But in a quirk of the rules, members who change their minds before the deadline of 3 September can amend their vote by casting another ballot – with only the latest one counting.
Ms Mordaunt’s elimination came as a bitter blow to supporters, who had presented her as a “fresh face” candidate able to dispel voter distrust of the Conservatives built up during Mr Johnson’s three years in power.
The leadership contest will now take place between two senior members of Johnson’s cabinet, with the Tory right rallying around Ms Truss’s banner while centrists back Sunak and both candidates trying to shake off association with the departing PM.
