UK PM Race: Rishi Sunak Tops First Round Of Voting In Leadership Contest

UK PM Race: Rishi Sunak was followed by Commerce Minister Penny Mordaunt with 77 votes and Foreign Minister Liz Truss with 55 votes.

Rishi Sunak, Britain's former chancellor of the exchequer and candidate to become the next prime minister, delivers a speech at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre (Source: File Photo/AFP)

New Delhi: Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak has secured the highest number of votes at 88 in the first round of voting to be elected leader of the Conservative Party. Sunak was followed by Commerce Minister Penny Mordaunt with 77 votes and Foreign Minister Liz Truss with 55 votes. Meanwhile, former cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt and current chancellor Nadhim Zahawi withdrew from the leadership race after the first round of voting. They failed to garner the 30 votes needed to make it to the next round. Now the frontrunners in the race for British PM are Sunak, Liz Truss and Mordaunt.

Sunak continues to lead the race and is said to have the support of the maximum number of MPs. 

While Sunak has kept a consistent lead among his Tory parliamentary colleagues since he declared his intention to run for party leadership last week, the Conservative Party membership base which will have the final say seems to be building momentum behind Mordaunt.

The race is by all accounts reducing into a three-way Sunak, Mordaunt and Liz Truss clash, however, the field is as yet considered completely open.

The following round of casting a ballot by the 358 Conservative members from Parliament to pick their top choices left on the ballot paper is scheduled for Thursday when the field of candidates will be reduced significantly further to a more limited rundown of finalists.

Under the timetable set by the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, the deadline to trim down the waitlist to only two excess applicants is July 21.

The process will then be taken over by the Conservative Party central command to sort out a progression of hustings in various parts of the UK for the last two to pitch campaign pledges to the assessed 200,000 Conservative Party members.

The applicant who gets the most votes will be chosen as the new Conservative Party and British Prime Minister leader on September 5. 

(With PTI inputs)