Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss enter the final round of the race for the UK PM’s office
New Delhi: UK ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and incumbent Foreign Secretary Liz Truss have entered the final round of the race for the office of the leader of the Conservative Party leader and the government, Committee 1922 head Graham Brady announced Wednesday.
Summarizing the outcome of the fifth round of the internal party vote, Brady announced that Deputy Trade Secretary Penny Mordaunt has received the fewest votes (105) and got eliminated from the race. Sunak boosted his leadership from 118 to 137 votes, while Truss received 113 votes.
This is a significantly smaller gap than the one that took place between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt in 2019. Back then, Johnson gained 160 votes, while Hunt only received 77. Now, almost 200,000 members of the Conservative party will have to decide until September 5 whether the kingdom will have the first ever dark-skinned or the third female Prime Minister.
The 42-year-old former Chancellor has not assured a similarly easy ride as he faces a much tougher electorate of the Tory membership base, which has shown favoritism for his rival Liz Truss in most recent surveys.
Rishi Sunak has tried to strike a balance between the personal and professional, from the launch of his bid with the story of his Indian family that emigrated from East Africa in the 1960s. As a devout Hindu, Sunak is a regular at the temple where he was born in Southampton and became the first Chancellor to light Diwali diyaas outside his office residence of 11 Downing Street in November 2020.
(Vinayak)
