Sunak, Mordaunt cement lead in UK race to succeed PM Boris Johnson

LONDON (BLOOMBERG) - Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt are ahead of their rivals in the race to become Conservative Party leader and UK prime minister.

In the second ballot of Tory MPs on Thursday (July 14), the former Chancellor of the Exchequer won 101 votes, ahead of junior trade minister and bookmakers' favourite Mordaunt with 83. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was third with 64.

Former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch came fourth with 49 votes, and Tom Tugendhat, chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, fifth on 32.

The next ballot is scheduled for Monday.

The result puts Sunak and Mordaunt on course to reach the run-off over the summer - though the picture can still change - when grassroots Conservative Party members make a final choice.

Polling shows Mordaunt, whose momentum has built rapidly in recent weeks, prevailing when the winner is announced on Sept 5.

Attorney General Suella Braverman was knocked out, under rules that remove the candidate with the lowest support. How her backers shift allegiance could be a major factor in how the contest plays out.

The contest has been marked by growing rancour between rival campaigns. Accusations of smears and lies between candidates were what the Conservative Party had been seeking to avoid when it came up with rules designed to accelerate the contest. The risk is that the fallout reaches the wider electorate, with the Tories already trailing Labour in the polls.

On Thursday, Truss's allies including Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey were pushing for supporters of Braverman and the other candidate from the right of the party, Kemi Badenoch, to merge their campaigns and endorse the foreign secretary. Another Truss supporter, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke, even questioned Mordaunt's credentials for the top job, as did former Brexit negotiator David Frost.

Further votes are scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week, until a final two have been selected.

Sunak is campaigning on his record as chancellor, arguing that he is the only candidate with a realistic plan to deal with the UK's cost-of-living crisis.

"Inflation is the enemy," Sunak told BBC Radio 4, stressing that getting it down is his "number one priority."

He added that he wanted to see tax cuts during this Parliament but declined to say when he thought they would be possible.

"I don't cut taxes to win elections, I win elections to cut taxes," he said.

But his stance is a risk. He raised the tax burden to its highest level since the 1940s as chancellor to pay for pandemic-era spending, a record that sits uneasily with many Tory MPs.

Sunak also resisted calls to cut taxes for fear of fuelling inflation, which is forecast to exceed 11 per cent in the UK in October.

Speaking at her campaign launch event in Westminster, Truss reiterated her view that the government should not immediately address the UK's bulging debt load amassed during the pandemic, saying it should be paid over a longer period of time, akin to a war debt.

She also said she would cancel a planned rise in corporation tax.

"I can deliver a different economic plan that is credible," Truss said, in a thinly veiled criticism of Sunak's approach. "We cannot have business-as-usual economic management."