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    Rishi Sunak’s Challenge: Unifying the Party and Fixing the Economy

    The Conservative Party is fractured and Britain’s public finances are battered. That will test the political skills of a leader who has been involved in national politics for only seven years.LONDON — Rishi Sunak took over as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday, the third in seven weeks, hoping to slow the revolving door at 10 Downing Street and restore stability to a government in turmoil.But as he assembled a cabinet and began to confront a grave economic crisis, Mr. Sunak faced formidable political challenges, for which analysts said his seven-year career in national politics had not fully prepared him. The swift, truncated nature of his election may further complicate his task.Having been elected with the votes of some 200 Conservative Party lawmakers, but not the party’s rank-and-file members, Mr. Sunak could have trouble claiming a mandate to lead a deeply fractured party, let alone the whole country. With his government forced into spending cuts and tax increases, he will have few resources with which to reward either his lawmakers or the public.“He’s inheriting a divided party with a large number of Conservative M.P.s and members who believe he has no legitimate mandate,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent. “That’s compounded by the fact that the party is in a free-fall and it’s not clear it has a parachute.”And yet, on a day of now-familiar rituals, as Mr. Sunak, the fifth prime minister in six years, traveled to Buckingham Palace to be anointed by King Charles III, there was also a calm in British politics — something that had been missing since Boris Johnson’s chaotic departure this past summer.Much of that owed to the 42-year-old prime minister himself: His well-received address to the nation on Tuesday showed a degree of political awareness, conceding the mistakes of his predecessor, Liz Truss, and promising improvement, while also reaching out to her and Mr. Johnson.“I will place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government’s agenda,” a somber and solitary Mr. Sunak said on Downing Street, after returning from the palace. “This will mean difficult decisions to come.”Mr. Sunak and King Charles III in Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.Pool photo by Aaron ChownHis decision to appear there without his wife or daughters, and to dispense with the cheering staff members that greeted Ms. Truss last month, lent his arrival a brisk, businesslike tone. It also underlined the contrast between Mr. Sunak and his predecessor, which he said would extend beyond optics.A former chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Sunak is expected to pull Britain back to more mainstream policies after Ms. Truss’s experiment in trickle-down economics, which rattled financial markets and badly damaged Britain’s fiscal reputation.More on the Political Turmoil in BritainMaking History: Rishi Sunak is the first person of color and the first Hindu to become prime minister of Britain — a milestone for a nation that is more and more ethnically diverse but also roiled by occasional anti-immigrant fervor.Economic Challenges: Sunak already has experience steering Britain’s public finances as chancellor of the Exchequer. That won’t make tackling the current crisis any easier.Political Primaries: Are primary elections of British leaders driving Britain’s dysfunction? The rise and fall of Liz Truss offers some lessons.Lifelong Allowance: As a former prime minister, Ms. Truss is eligible for a taxpayer-funded annual payout for the rest of her life. Some say she shouldn’t be allowed to receive it.“Mistakes were made,” Mr. Sunak said. “Not borne of ill will or bad intentions. Quite the opposite, in fact. But mistakes, nonetheless. And I have been elected as leader of my party, and your prime minister, in part, to fix them.”Mr. Sunak quickly set about selecting a cabinet remarkable for its familiar faces. He retained Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor whom Ms. Truss installed after ousting Kwasi Kwarteng, the architect of ill-fated tax cuts. Mr. Hunt, who has soothed the markets, is scheduled to present a more detailed fiscal plan on Oct. 31.Mr. Sunak also kept on Ben Wallace as defense secretary and James Cleverly as foreign secretary, even though both had backed Mr. Johnson over him in the leadership race. And he retained Penny Mordaunt, who mounted a spirited challenge to him in that contest, as leader of the House of Commons.It was a striking contrast to Ms. Truss, whose cabinet consisted almost entirely of people who had backed her for leader, and it seemed to signal a recognition by Mr. Sunak that he could not succeed by drawing dividing lines in the party.Clockwise from top left: Jeremy Hunt, Ben Wallace, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly.AFP — Getty; EPA, via Shutterstock; EPA, via Shutterstock; EPA, via Shutterstock; AFP — Getty; AFP — GettyMost conspicuously, Mr. Sunak reappointed Suella Braverman as home secretary, a job she had been forced out of only a week ago, ostensibly because she breached security rules. Her appointment was a gesture to the Conservative Party’s right flank: Ms. Braverman is a hard-liner who wants to cut immigration numbers. She said her “dream” was to see flights deporting asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda.Mr. Sunak did reward some loyalists, naming Dominic Raab, who campaigned faithfully for him, as deputy prime minister and justice minister, posts he held under Mr. Johnson.Ms. Truss made her own appearance at Downing Street in the morning with her family, after formally submitting her resignation to the king, just seven weeks after she had been anointed by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in one of her last official acts, two days before her death.In defiant, unapologetic farewell remarks, Ms. Truss took credit for protecting people from rising energy bills. Reiterating her belief in lower taxes and a fast-growing economy, she said, “I am more convinced than ever we need to be bold and confront the challenges that we face.”Taking a page from Mr. Johnson, who likened himself to the retiring fifth-century Roman politician Cincinnatus, Ms. Truss quoted the Roman philosopher Seneca: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”Liz Truss after her farewell remarks on Downing Street on Tuesday.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMs. Truss’s misfires have made Mr. Sunak’s job even more difficult. Britain’s straitened public finances and its higher borrowing costs — a consequence, in part, of rising interest rates in reaction to her policies — will require painful spending cuts. That will further test Mr. Sunak’s political skills. Last summer, he struggled to sell his tough-love message to party members, who preferred Ms. Truss’s supply-side remedies.“The ideological riddle that Sunak has to try to solve is how the Conservative Party, amid a profound and prolonged economic crisis, can reconnect with the voters it attracted after Brexit,” Professor Goodwin said.Mr. Sunak did reappoint Michael Gove, a seasoned minister, to a post overseeing efforts to “level up” struggling cities in the Midlands and north of England with more prosperous London. That is important to retaining working-class voters who propelled the Conservatives to their landslide general election victory in 2019.As chancellor, Mr. Sunak was lionized when he doled out billions of pounds to people who had lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic. He sponsored another good-news program, “Eat Out to Help Out,” which subsidized meals at restaurants to revive the industry after lockdowns.But when it came to withdrawing those benefits and raising taxes, Mr. Sunak’s reputation unsurprisingly suffered. During his campaign against Ms. Truss, he struggled to stick to his message of fiscal conservatism. Under pressure from her promises of tax cuts, he said he would temporarily suspend the value-added tax, a sales tax, on energy bills — something that he had earlier rejected.“He doesn’t have a lot of what I’d call trench-fighting experience,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “His progress through the party has been so rapid that he hasn’t spent years forging friendships with colleagues who’ve got his back come what may.”Mr. Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty at the British Asian Trust Reception at the British Museum in London, in February.Vickie Flores/EPA, via ShutterstockProfessor Bale said Mr. Sunak was also thin-skinned about criticism he faced last spring of his wife, Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian technology billionaire, for her privileged tax status. Her so-called non-domicile status allowed her to avoid paying taxes in Britain on millions of pounds of her global income (she eventually agreed to pay British taxes).While Mr. Sunak’s sensitive reaction to the attacks against his wife may have been understandable, he is likely to face many more of them in the coming months from an opposition Labour Party that will seize on his extreme wealth to paint him as out of touch with the anxieties of ordinary people.“They don’t care that he and his family are filthy rich,” Professor Bale said. “They do care they didn’t seem to be paying their fair share. That — and his heated outdoor swimming pool and his house in Santa Monica — is going to make it difficult for him to argue, ‘We’re all in this together.’”Political analysts said the sheer magnitude of Ms. Truss’s failure was Mr. Sunak’s biggest asset. The Conservatives are trailing Labour by more than 30 percentage points in some polls. Even those who ardently opposed Mr. Sunak recognize that he is likely their last hope of avoiding a general election rout that would sweep hundreds of Conservative lawmakers out of their seats.“His M.P.s have looked over the edge of the precipice and know that, unless they get behind the guy, who is basically their last chance, they’re heading for a huge fall,” Professor Bale said. “Basically, it’s Rishi or bust.”Mr. Sunak is Britain’s third prime minister in seven weeks. Hannah Mckay/Reuters More

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    Race for U.K. Prime Minister Heats Up as Nominations Roll In

    Conservative Party lawmakers have so far put more weight behind Rishi Sunak to be their next leader, but Boris Johnson is still in the fight to reclaim Downing Street.LONDON — The competition to replace Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister intensified on Sunday, with Rishi Sunak pulling ahead in the scramble for votes of Conservative lawmakers, but Boris Johnson mounting a lively campaign to reclaim the job he gave up three months ago amid a cascade of scandals.Mr. Sunak, who formally declared his candidacy with a promise to “fix our economy,” had lined up at least 144 votes by early Sunday afternoon, according to a tally by the BBC, more than double the 56 votes pledged to Mr. Johnson. A third candidate, Penny Mordaunt, had 23.Beyond the numerical advantage, Mr. Sunak has picked up significant endorsements from people on the right flank of the Conservative Party. On Sunday morning, Steve Baker, a lawmaker who represents an influential group of euro-skeptics in Parliament, announced he would support Mr. Sunak.“Boris Johnson would be a guaranteed disaster,” Mr. Baker told Sophy Ridge of Sky News. “We cannot allow it to happen.”That is important because it suggests that not only do party leaders view Mr. Johnson as an intolerable risk, they also believe that Mr. Sunak, who served as chancellor of the Exchequer under Mr. Johnson, could bridge some of the bitter ideological fissures in the party, which were deepened by Ms. Truss’s turbulent six weeks in office. In the last contest, many figures on the party’s right flocked to Ms. Truss, which put her in a good position to beat Mr. Sunak.More on the Situation in BritainA Rapid Downfall: Liz Truss is about to become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. How did she get there?Lifelong Allowance: The departing prime minister is eligible for a taxpayer-funded annual payout for the rest of her life. Some say she shouldn’t be allowed to receive it.Staging a Comeback?: When Boris Johnson left his role as prime minister in September, he hinted he might return. He is now being mentioned as a successor to Ms. Truss.Under the rules set out by the party, candidates are required to have nominations from at least 100 of the 357 Conservative lawmakers to advance to a second round of voting, among rank-and-file members of the party.Candidates have until 2 p.m. Monday to gather nominations. On Monday, the party will hold two rounds of voting to winnow the field to one or two. If two remain, party members will cast online ballots later in the week.Boris Johnson on Saturday at Gatwick Airport near London after returning from a vacation.Henry Nicholls/ReutersIf Mr. Johnson can drum up 100 nominations, it would significantly raise his odds of returning to Downing Street, as opinion polls suggest he would win the vote among members. Allies of the former prime minister insist he already has those 100 votes, but political analysts have expressed skepticism, noting that barely half that number have publicly declared their intention to back him.Mr. Johnson did receive a notable endorsement from a member of his last cabinet, Nadhim Zahawi, who served briefly as chancellor of Exchequer after the resignation of Mr. Sunak. Mr. Sunak’s departure helped set in motion the wholesale walkout of ministers that finally toppled Mr. Johnson.“When I was Chancellor, I saw a preview of what Boris 2.0 would look like,” Mr. Zahawi wrote on Twitter. “He was contrite & honest about his mistakes. He’d learned from those mistakes how he could run No10 & the country better.”In July, Mr. Zahawi was among those urging Mr. Johnson to resign. “The country deserves a government that is not only stable, but which acts with integrity,” he wrote in a letter to his boss. “Prime Minister, you know in your heart what the right thing to do is, and go now.”Mr. Johnson, who flew home on Saturday from a vacation in the Dominican Republic to begin lobbying lawmakers, has yet to formally declare his candidacy. But another of his former ministers, Jacob Rees-Mogg, told the BBC that he had spoken with Mr. Johnson, and that he would “clearly stand.”Ms. Mordaunt, who officially threw her hat in the ring on Friday, is viewed as unlikely to advance past the first round of voting. But she insisted on Sunday that she, too, was confident of lining up more than 100 lawmakers.Penny Mordaunt on Sunday in London. She declared on Friday that she would stand in the leadership race.Alberto Pezzali/Associated PressBritish newspapers reported that Mr. Johnson was seeking to strike a deal with Mr. Sunak to join forces in a unity ticket, and that the two had met on Saturday. But the shape of such a ticket was unclear, given Mr. Sunak’s large lead among lawmakers, and the animosity between the two men makes any cooperation look far-fetched.In the statement announcing his candidacy, Mr. Sunak said his experience as chancellor would equip him to lead Britain through the economic challenges that loom. He promised a government of “integrity, professionalism, and accountability,” drawing a clear comparison to the ethical failings of Mr. Johnson’s tenure.The success of Mr. Sunak’s message will hinge on how lawmakers weigh that against their own electoral fortunes. The Conservatives are trailing the opposition Labour Party by more than 30 percentage points in polls. Though the Conservative Party’s steep erosion in support began under Mr. Johnson, he is still viewed by many as a proven vote-getter after his landslide victory in the 2019 general election.Mr. Rees-Mogg, repeating the claim that Mr. Johnson had more than 100 votes, described him as the party’s “greatest electoral asset,” contending that only he could engineer a victory over the Labour Party. More

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    Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak Among Top Contenders to Replace UK Prime Minister

    Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the man who helped oust him from his job, the former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, are seen as two of the top contenders within the governing Conservative Party.LONDON — The race to succeed Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister was already gathering pace on Friday morning, potentially pitting the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, against the man who helped oust him from Downing Street just a little more than three months ago, the former finance minister, Rishi Sunak.Penny Mordaunt, now a senior minister, was also seen as a serious potential contender in an election that will be conducted within the governing Conservative Party, which controls the government and can select a prime minister without calling a general election.The next government leader faces a formidable task as Britain heads into an economic slowdown with inflation surging, borrowing costs rising and a winter likely to be dominated by labor strikes and worries about energy supplies.Ahead of what could be a head-on battle against Mr. Johnson, Mr. Sunak’s supporters are presenting him as the safe pair of hands, the man who can restore stability following the crisis precipitated by Ms. Truss’s government when it announced unfunded tax cuts last month, sending financial markets into a tailspin. The British pound plummeted and borrowing costs soared.Less than seven weeks after she took office, Ms. Truss resigned on Thursday — the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.This summer, after Mr. Johnson was forced to resign, Mr. Sunak ran to succeed him but lost out to Ms. Truss. During that leadership contest he gave a prophetic warning of the risks of her economic program, including the tax cuts that ended up rattling the markets.So the appointment of Mr. Sunak, an experienced former chancellor of the Exchequer, might reassure financial markets enough to give a new government more leeway when it comes up with a new budget plan.“Rishi is the experienced leader to sort the economy, lead effectively, get us back into political contention and unite the Party and country,” wrote Bim Afolami, a Conservative lawmaker, on Twitter.Rishi Sunak, one of the possible candidates for prime minister, meeting with supporters in August in Birmingham, England.Susannah Ireland/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the prospect of an extraordinary return for Mr. Johnson, who left Downing Street less than two months ago under a sizable cloud, has galvanized the looming contest.Reinstalling him would be a risk for the Conservative Party because he quit after a succession of ethics scandals and is still being investigated by a parliamentary committee over claims he misled lawmakers about lockdown-busting parties at his Downing Street office and residence.More on the Situation in BritainA Rapid Downfall: Liz Truss is about to become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. How did she get there?Lifelong Allowance: The departing prime minister is eligible for a taxpayer-funded annual payout for the rest of her life. Some say she shouldn’t be allowed to receive it.Staging a Comeback?: When Boris Johnson left his role as prime minister in September, he hinted he might return. He is now being mentioned as a successor to Ms. Truss.Mr. Johnson has been on a Caribbean vacation. But his father, Stanley Johnson, did little to dispel the impression that his son was preparing a comeback attempt. He told Britain’s ITV television network on Friday: “I think he’s on a plane, as I understand it.”By the time he left office, Mr. Johnson, always a polarizing figure, was deeply unpopular with voters, according to opinion polls. He tarnished his party’s reputation and dozens of members of his government resigned.But since then, the Conservative Party’s support has collapsed. A new opinion poll showed the party plunging to a new low in support of just 14 percent.Mr. Johnson’s supporters argue that because he won a landslide election victory in 2019, he has a mandate from the voters, and his brand of optimism could help rally the Conservatives.If he were to run, he would be seen as the clear favorite as he remains popular among party members who could make the ultimate decision.Boris Johnson on his last day in office in September.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesIt was they who, during the summer, rejected Mr. Sunak in favor of Ms. Truss when the two reached the final stages of the last leadership contest. One of the main reasons for his failure was the perception among party members that Mr. Sunak betrayed Mr. Johnson by resigning from his cabinet, prompting the crisis that destroyed his leadership.Even before formal declarations by any candidates, their allies were canvassing lawmakers, who in some cases offered their public support.Among those urging Mr. Johnson to run are Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, who wrote on Twitter that he was supporting the former prime minister under the hashtag #BORISorBUST. Nadine Dorries, another strong supporter in Parliament, described him as a “known winner.”More centrist lawmakers might also be tempted to support Mr. Johnson because of his history of success in elections before his recent ethics scandals. But his critics say he would struggle to unite his colleagues, and one Conservative lawmaker, Roger Gale, has said he would resign from the party if Mr. Johnson returned.Ms. Mordaunt, who finished third in the summer leadership contest, has good communication skills and has raised her profile in recent weeks, including this week when she appeared in Parliament to defend the government.She is relatively untested at the highest reaches of government. But her supporters argue that she has more experience than former prime ministers like Tony Blair and David Cameron who never held ministerial positions before taking power, having been in opposition.And Ms. Mordaunt might be the best placed of the possible contenders to manage a fractured Conservative Party.“Penny is the best candidate to unite our party and lead our great nation,” said Bob Seely, one of her supporters and a member of Parliament.Britain’s leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, is another potential candidate for prime minister. Daniel Leal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNone of the likely front-runners have yet declared, but by Monday afternoon, contenders must have nominations from at least 100 of the 357 Conservative lawmakers, a number intended to speed up the contest by limiting potential candidates to a maximum of three.If only one politician passes that threshold, he or she will become prime minister on Monday. If there are two or three, Conservative lawmakers will vote on Monday and the top two will then go for a final decision on Oct. 28 in a vote by about 170,000 Conservative Party members — unless one withdraws voluntarily.Other possible candidates include the home secretary, Suella Braverman, who was fired by Ms. Truss on Wednesday, and Kemi Badenoch, the international trade secretary. However, on the evidence of their performance in the summer leadership contest, neither is seen as likely to reach the threshold of 100 nominations.On Friday, the defense secretary, Ben Wallace, ruled himself out of the contest, and said he was leaning toward support for Mr. Johnson. More

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    Prime Minister Race in Britain Remains Unsettled in Wake of Johnson’s Downfall

    Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, is the current front-runner, but Penny Mordaunt, a junior trade minister, is making a surprisingly strong run for the leadership position.LONDON — The last time Britain’s Conservative Party elected a new leader, Boris Johnson dominated the contest from wire to wire, a political celebrity so famous that many voters just called him Boris.Three years later, the oddsmakers’ favorite is Penny Mordaunt, a junior trade minister so obscure that some voters have told pollsters that they confuse her with another single-name English star: the singer Adele.Ms. Mordaunt’s sudden surge in popularity reflects the wide-open, topsy-turvy nature of the race. And it reveals the shadow that Mr. Johnson still casts over British politics. Ms. Mordaunt’s lack of association with the recently deposed prime minister is one of her calling cards: She promotes herself as a fresh start after the ceaseless drama of the past three years. Weary Tory lawmakers are responding.Strictly speaking, Ms. Mordaunt, 49, is not the current front-runner: That status belongs to Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, who won the backing of 101 lawmakers in the second round of voting on Thursday. Ms. Mordaunt was second, with 83 votes. Conservative legislators will hold additional ballots early this week, before advancing two candidates to a vote of the party’s rank-and-file membership, the results of which will be announced in early September.Provided she makes the shortlist of two, however, Ms. Mordaunt looms as a formidable contender. In a poll of members last week, she finished far ahead of Mr. Sunak in a head-to-head matchup. She also easily outpolled the No. 3 candidate, Liz Truss, who is Mr. Johnson’s foreign secretary and has refused to disavow him. Ms. Mordaunt, by contrast, is neither a Johnson loyalist nor an insurgent figure.“She has the best of both worlds,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “She can’t be accused of disloyalty on the one hand, and on the other, she has sufficient distance from Johnson because she played such a minor role in government that she’s not tainted by association.”Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor of the Exechequer, has faced attacks from allies of Boris Johnson for resigning his position two weeks ago.Alberto Pezzali/Associated PressVernon Bogdanor, a professor of government at King’s College London, said Ms. Mordaunt’s low profile makes her an attractive blank slate. “No one knows what her views are, and so one can attribute one’s own views to her,” he said. “The same happens in spades, in regard to the queen.”But Ms. Mordaunt’s swift rise has alarmed some critics, who say she is untested and thinly qualified for prime minister. A paratrooper’s daughter who serves in the Royal Naval Reserve, Ms. Mordaunt was defense secretary for two and a half months in 2019 and held a lesser cabinet post in charge of international development.People who have worked with her describe her as charming and sincere, but not interested in the complexities of policy. She also has very little economic experience, at a time when Britain faces a once-in-a-generation cost-of-living crisis.“She was honest and straightforward, and I thought she did care about international development,” said Alistair Burt, who was a minister in the international development department when she was there. “But it is a surprise — I wouldn’t have thought that she would be where she is.”Whether she was equipped to be prime minister, Mr. Burt said he “genuinely wouldn’t know because she hasn’t been significantly tested.”As Ms. Mordaunt’s profile has risen, the attacks on her have sharpened. David Frost, who resigned as Mr. Johnson’s Brexit negotiator last year, gave a scathing account of Ms. Mordaunt, who served as his deputy. He accused her of a poor grasp of detail and absence from her government department, and of being such a problem that he had asked the prime minister to move her to another job.Like other hard-line Brexiteers, Mr. Frost has thrown his support behind Ms. Truss, who campaigned against leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum, but who has since converted to the cause with zeal. Ms. Mordaunt voted to leave, as did Mr. Sunak.Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, remained loyal to Mr. Johnson, which could hurt her in the leadership race.Peter Nicholls/ReutersIt is one of the paradoxes of this race that Brexiteers are opposing the two candidates who backed Brexit and are supporting the one who opposed it.Not only did Ms. Mordaunt urge Britons to vote for Brexit, but she also played a minor, though memorable, part in the campaign by warning that Turkish migrants would flock to Britain when their own country joined the European Union, something she claimed Britain would be unable to block. The statement was erroneous: Britain, like other members, had a right to veto Turkey’s membership.Brexit supporters regard her with suspicion for another reason: She voted for an ill-fated withdrawal agreement with the European Union negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May.Ms. Mordaunt combines an interest in security and a military background with views on social issues that are mildly progressive by Tory party standards. She has spoken up in favor of the rights of transgender people, for example, a position that has gotten her into trouble with the culture warriors on the party’s right.Seeking to defuse the issue, Ms. Mordaunt said last week that transgender women “are not biological women like me, but the law recognizes them in their new gender and that’s very simple and straightforward.”In the cut-and-thrust of Tory politics, of course, it is neither.During a televised debate on Friday evening, Mr. Mordaunt came under renewed pressure on the issue, with one of her opponents, Kemi Badenoch, questioning whether she had backtracked on her earlier position. Critics said Ms. Mordaunt’s performance was wobbly and unfocused.Analysts said the unsettled nature of the contest had made it especially vicious. Mr. Sunak, the early front-runner, has come under attack by Mr. Johnson’s allies, who view his resignation less than two weeks ago, which set the stage for the prime minister’s downfall, as a betrayal. Mr. Sunak’s tax policy as chancellor was criticized by Jacob Rees-Mogg, with whom he sat in cabinet just days ago. Mr. Rees-Mogg refused to deny reports that he had described the policy, which included tax increases, as “socialist.”The Conservative Party Conference last year in Manchester, England.Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock“Rishi Sunak was always going to get it in the neck,” Professor Bale said.Ms. Truss, who did not resign from Mr. Johnson’s cabinet, faces the danger of being the most closely associated with him. Critics said her campaign had gotten off to a less-than-stirring start. She is not viewed as a charismatic campaigner, despite her solid credentials. One Liberal Democratic lawmaker likened her to Hillary Clinton, while Ms. Mordaunt, the lawmaker said, more resembled Bill Clinton.Unlike Ms. Mordaunt, Ms. Truss has significant economic experience. Yet Ms. Mordaunt’s weakness in that area has yet to hurt her campaign, despite the soaring inflation and specter of a recession that haunts Britain. A lack of focus on the future, analysts said, was another legacy of Mr. Johnson’s distracting tenure.“He’s left the Conservative Party deeply confused because he was trying to hold together an electoral coalition that isn’t a particularly natural one,” Professor Bale said, referring to traditional Conservative voters in the south and working-class supporters in the north of England that Mr. Johnson won over from the Labour Party in 2019.“It was always going to be a case of ‘après moi, le deluge,’” he added. “When Boris Johnson eventually was forced out, there was almost inevitably going to be chaos and bad feeling because of who he was and how he acted.” More

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    Sunak Takes the Lead to Replace Johnson as U.K. Prime Minister

    The former chancellor of the Exchequer led a pack of candidates after the first round, while an obscure trade minister surprised in second place.LONDON — Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer, stayed at the front of the pack of candidates vying to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain after the first round of the Conservative Party’s leadership contest on Tuesday.But Penny Mordaunt, a relatively little-known junior trade minister, finished a strong second in the vote among Conservative lawmakers. And she has opened a commanding lead among the party’s rank-and-file members, according to a new poll, which suggested she could soon supplant Mr. Sunak as the favorite.In the secret vote, more akin to a papal conclave than a national plebiscite, 357 Conservative lawmakers cast ballots to elect their next leader, who will become the fourth prime minister of Britain in six years.Six candidates remained in the race after the first round. Two were eliminated for failing to clear the minimum threshold of support from 30 members of Parliament, including Nadhim Zahawi, who replaced Mr. Sunak as chancellor after he resigned last week in a move that set the stage for Mr. Johnson’s downfall.It was the first of multiple rounds of party ballots this week, designed to whittle the sprawling field down to two finalists. They will spend a hectic summer wooing the party’s membership — a larger, though still limited group — which will elect Mr. Johnson’s replacement in early September.The quirky nature of the process has already produced some surprises: While Mr. Sunak was expected to be the front-runner, and won a respectable 88 votes, Ms. Mordaunt’s 67 votes placed her within striking distance of him. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, emerged as the third top-tier candidate, with 50 votes.Penny Mordaunt, a trade minister, finished a surprising second in the vote among Conservative lawmakers.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockIn a poll conducted by the market research firm YouGov, Ms. Mordaunt, a paratrooper’s daughter who serves in the Royal Naval Reserve, holds a wide lead among members over Mr. Sunak, Ms. Truss and all other candidates.Two younger female candidates — Kemi Badenoch, with 40 votes, and Suella Braverman, with 32 — got through, keeping their hopes alive but raising the prospect that the hard-line Brexiteer vote may coalesce behind Ms. Truss.Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee, who is running as an outsider, also survived into the second round, with 37 votes.Jeremy Hunt, a former foreign secretary who unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Johnson for leader in 2019, came in last with 18 votes. Mr. Tugendhat would hope to pick up some votes in later rounds from the centrist Mr. Hunt.Mr. Zahawi, with just 25 votes, was perhaps the day’s biggest disappointment. He had been a rising star in the party, propelled by his energetic management of the government’s rollout of coronavirus vaccines last year.The remaining six conservative leadership candidates are, clockwise from top left, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut critics faulted him for acting erratically last week, first accepting a plum post from Mr. Johnson, then calling on him to resign only a day later. There were also questions about Mr. Zahawi’s business dealings, which led him to complain that he was the victim of a smear campaign.In the early days of the campaign, with so many candidates jostling for attention, the debates have been scattered and not particularly substantive. Much of the action involved horse-trading between candidates, with rising competitors eager to win over the votes of those who dropped out.To complicate the picture further, Mr. Johnson suggested that the process of replacing him could move more quickly if the second-ranked candidate bowed out after the initial rounds and the leader was elected by acclamation.Downing Street later said that if the winner was chosen on Sept. 5, which is the timetable set out by the party committee running the election, Mr. Johnson would deliver his formal resignation to Queen Elizabeth II the following day.Appearing at one of his last sessions of Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr. Johnson said he was “leaving with my head held high,” despite a drumbeat of scandals that eventually turned his party and his cabinet against him.In a sign that his rivals are already beginning to turn the page on him, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, devoted most of his questions to pressing Mr. Johnson for his views on people who have non-domicile tax status in Britain.That status is claimed by the wife of Mr. Sunak, Akshata Murty, whose father is the Indian technology billionaire Narayana Murthy. Mr. Starmer signaled that Labour would make the wealth of Mr. Sunak and his wife the centerpiece of its attack on him if he emerges as the next Tory leader.Mr. Johnson has declined to endorse any of the candidates, saying that to do so might hurt their chances. But in a lively exchange with Mr. Starmer, he predicted that any one of them would be able to “wipe the floor” with the Labour leader, whom he lampooned as “Captain Crash-a-Roony Snooze Fest.” More