The next round of voting in the Conservative Party leadership contest takes place on Thursday, with the race to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister heating up nicely.
Former chancellor Rishi Sunak appears to be the clear front-runner, securing 88 votes in the first round and picking up the support of Jeremy Hunt after he dropped out of the running on Wednesday, joining the likes of Sir Gavin Williamson, Oliver Dowden, Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps and Steve Barclay in endorsing the candidate.
However, Mr Sunak endured a torrid time on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday morning as anchor Justin Webb pressed him on his wealth and whether it disqualified him from being able to empathise with the very real concerns of low-income families facing hard choices because of the cost of living crisis.
He was also reluctant to be drawn on precisely when he lost faith in Mr Johnson’s premiership, having served him for two and a half years before his dramatic resignation on 5 July amid accusations that he first set up a draft campaign website at the height of the Partygate scandal back in January, presumably in anticipation of the PM’s demise.
Junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt appears to be the second favourite, having secured 67 votes on Wednesday, ahead of foreign secretary Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and attorney general Suella Braverman.
But Ms Mordaunt has also found herself under siege this morning, with former Brexit minister Lord Frost telling TalkTV he has “grave reservations” about her candidacy after working with her.
“I am quite surprised at where she is in this leadership race. She was my deputy – notionally, more than really – in the Brexit talks last year.
“I felt she did not master the detail that was necessary in the negotiations last year. She wouldn’t always deliver tough messages to the European Union when that was necessary.
“She wasn’t fully accountable, she wasn’t always visible. Sometimes I didn’t even know where she was. This became such a problem that, after six months, I had to ask the prime minister to move her on and find somebody else to support me.”
With the contest increasingly resembling Netflix’s brutal death sport thriller Squid Game, its second round of voting opens at 11.30am on Thursday morning and closes at 1.30pm.
We can then expect to see the results published at around 3pm.
