Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to go head to head to replace Liz Truss

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are both expected to take part in the leadership contest (Picture: Reuters)

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Chancellor Rishi Sunak are both expected to run in the Tory leadership contest.

Johnson is currently on holiday in the Caribbean but is expected to fly back immediately after the resignation of Liz Truss.

Sunak has been in hiding since he was sacked as Chancellor, but he is now being touted as the favourite to follow in the footsteps of Truss.

Mr Johnson was forced out of No 10 on September 6 this year but he is understood to now be taking soundings about trying to get his old job back. 

A snap poll of Tory Party members earlier this week saw Boris Johnson emerge as their top choice of successor.

Mr Johnson was the favourite to succeed Ms Truss on 32%, with Rishi Sunak second on 23% and then Ben Wallace on 10%.

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However the thought of Johnson returning to power has not sat well with the Liberal Democrats, who have called for him to be banned from running.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: ‘Liz Truss trashed our economy and before her Boris Johnson failed our country.

‘The Conservatives have shown time and time again that they are not fit to govern our great country.

‘We don’t need another Conservative prime minister lurching from crisis to crisis, letting the British people down, increasing their mortgages, not tackling the economic problems.

‘The only way we are going to sort this out is if the Conservative MPs for once do their patriotic duty and work with the opposition to get the general election our country needs to let the British people have their say.’

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Boris and Rishi are among the favourites to be the next PM (Picture: AP) Rishi Sunak has also joined the race, it has been claimed (Picture: EPA) Former PM Boris Johnson is expected to run to be PM again (Picture: Ben Cawthra/REX/Shutterstock)

Tory MP Justin Tomlinson said it was ‘wishful thinking’ to imagine that Boris Johnson could return.

Tomlinson, who described himself as someone who had strongly supported the former prime minister in the past, told Sky News: ‘I just think it’s too soon.

‘I was there supporting him to the very end but he did lose the confidence of the majority of our colleagues.

‘I thought that was wrong. But you have to respect that.

‘I don’t think a sufficient enough time has probably passed for the party to then unite behind him and for me this now is about us, frankly, being grown up, being pragmatic and putting the country first.’

MP Bob Seely, who backed Penny Mordaunt in the summer’s Conservative Party leadership contest, said he hoped she would run for leader.

Mr Seely also said he predicted ‘quite a high threshold’ for MPs to stand for leader, while also indicating that he did not want to ‘go back’ to the time when Boris Johnson was leader.

He said: ‘Good luck to Boris. I don’t want to go back to a few months ago where we were so whoever is going to get through I think there’s going to be quite a high threshold.

‘And I will see personally who those candidates are when they get the numbers.’

Backing Ms Mordaunt, Mr Seely said: ‘I think she has a great set of qualities. She has lots of ministerial experience. I think she comes across very well. And I think she resonates with people.

‘Right now when we are facing a couple of international crises, both in energy, but also in the Ukraine war, having somebody with stature, with government experience, who can resonate with people, I think is really important.’

Boris Johnson could be in the running again (Picture: Getty) Liz Truss resigned as PM becoming the shortest ever Prime Minister to serve the UK (Picture: EyePress News/Shutterstock)

It comes after Liz Truss announced she would be stepping down as leader of the Tory party.

A day after she said ‘I am a fighter not a quitter’, Britain is set to have a new leader within a week.

On the steps of Downing Street, the PM told the nation that she recognised, ‘given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party.’

Yesterday, Truss’ Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, had departed with a thinly veiled swipe at the PM’s ‘mistakes’ in office, before pandemonium took hold at Westminster over a fracking vote.

Tory MPs then sent flurry of letters of no confidence in the PM to the chairman of the 1922 backbench committee, Sir Graham Brady, who met with her earlier inside Number 10.

Truss had already sacked her chancellor, friend and long-time ally Kwasi Kwarteng in a desperate bid to save her own job, but that failed to convince mutinous Tories to keep her in office.

Sir Graham Brady from the 1922 Committee then announced there would be a leadership contest, with a new leader chosen in the next week.

Earlier this week what might have been seen as innocuous at the time, might now end up being a foresight, when a man spotted Boris’ face in his curry.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for Johnson to be banned from running (Picture: Getty) Was this a horrific foresight when a man spotted Boris’ face in a curry earlier this week? (Picture: Kennedy News and Media)

The former PM has been out of Parliament for just over a month, and now it looks like he could be making a run to get back into Number 10.

Johnson has been the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2015, and he was PM for three years, from July 24, 2019, to September 6 this year.

He was Mayor of London for eight years from May 2008, until May 2016, being elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012.

‘Dishy Rishi’ as he was dubbed after he announced his ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ campaign during the pandemic, is the bookie’s favourite to succeed Truss.

Sunak, from Southampton, has had quite an international career so far – with ventures in the UK, US, India, and beyond.

Mr Sunak studied at the prestigious Winchester College Oxford – where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

He then went to California to earn an MBA as a Fulbright Scholar – perhaps the most well-respected education exchange programme around – at the Ivy League college Stanford University.

However, he was soon back in the UK working at investment bank Goldman Sachs.

He became a politician for the Conservative party in 2014, ultimately taking over the Richmord (Yorks) seat held by former Tory leader Lord William Hague in 2015.

Mr Sunak was also re-elected in 2017. He was clearly popular in his constituency at the time – holding on to a margin of more than 27,000 votes.

He became Chancellor in 2020, and perhaps his most famous decisions have been the announcement of the furlough scheme and the Eat Out To Help Out scheme – both during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer on July 5 2022, citing the differences between himself and PM Boris Johnson in his resignation letter.

On July 8, he announced his candidacy to replace Mr Johnson as Tory leader.

Following a vote among MPs, Mr Sunak and Liz Truss were named as the final two candidates for leader and the new PM. 

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