Former finance minister Rishi Sunak has come out on top in the first round of voting for UK prime minister, ahead of Mordaunt and Foreign Secretary Truss.

JAKARTA – Former Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak won the biggest support from Conservative lawmakers on Wednesday, in the first round to choose who will replace Boris Johnson as party leader and British Prime Minister, while two other rivals won been eliminated.

Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor last week helped hasten Johnson's downfall, has the support of 88 of the party's 358 MPs, with Business Secretary Penny Mordaunt second with 67 votes and Home Secretary Liz Truss third with 50 votes.

Nadhim Zahawi, who succeeded Sunak as finance minister last week, and former foreign minister Jeremy Hunt were eliminated after failing to secure the required minimum of 30 votes. They were joined by three other competitors who had left power the day before.

The remaining candidates, which also include former Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch, Attorney General Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat, chair of Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, will advance to the runoff on Thursday.

The next vote will take place among Conservative MPs, each time eliminating the candidate with the fewest votes, to reduce the number of candidates to two finals on July 21. The new leader will then be chosen from the two by the 200,000-member Conservative Party, and the final results will be announced on September 5.

Interestingly, although Mordaunt was the front-runner in the YouGov poll, Sunak managed to emerge the winner with the most votes in the first round yesterday.

Whoever wins will face the daunting challenge of restoring public trust shattered by a series of scandals involving Johnson, from breaking COVID-19 lockdown rules to appointing an MP to government despite being briefed on allegations of sexual misconduct.

The UK economy is facing soaring inflation, high debt and low growth, leaving citizens grappling with the greatest pressure on their finances in decades. All this against a backdrop of an energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which has driven up fuel prices.

As elections heat up, they also become more volatile, as rival camps clash and some offer a series of enticing promises of tax cuts.

Sunak said it was not credible to propose more spending and lower taxes, saying he was offering honesty and not “a fairy tale”.

Zahawi said he had been tainted by his personal finances while Culture Minister Nadine Dorries, deeply loyal to Johnson and now backing Truss, accused Sunak's team of “low blows” as part of their strategy “Stop Liz.”

“I think his (Sunak) behavior towards Boris Johnson, his disloyalty means I cannot support him,” Brexit minister Jacob Rees-Mogg told Sky News.

Johnson, who won a large majority in December 2019, announced last week that he would resign after multiple ministers resigned and many Conservative Party lawmakers were in open rebellion.

His potential successors have stressed that they will demonstrate integrity and trust, but they too must ask themselves questions, such as why they supported Johnson for so long. Sunak, like Johnson, was fined for breaking lockdown rules.

Political opponents say candidates have focused solely on winning support from the ruling party's right, talking about tax cuts and more defense spending, without addressing the cost-of-living crisis faced by the population.

The poll also shows that although the Conservatives debate among themselves, they are far behind the main opposition Labor Party, even though no election has been scheduled for several years.

“I am your best chance of winning this election. I am the candidate that Labour fears,” Mordaunt said at the official launch of her campaign on Wednesday.

People really want the “good old stuff” with low taxes, small government and personal responsibility, she added.

Amid these promises, Andy King, a board member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which independently monitors public finances, told a parliamentary committee that taxes should be increased or spending reduced to maintain fiscal sustainability.

---

English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and French versions are automatically generated by AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in the translation, please always consider Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)