Live updates: Rishi Sunak on course to become U.K. prime minister
Sunak #Sunak
LONDON — Britain may know as soon as today who will serve as its next prime minister — the third within two months. After former prime minister Boris Johnson announced late Sunday that he was dropping his bid to return to power, the path was looking fairly clear for Rishi Sunak, the former finance minister who led the movement to oust Johnson over the summer.
Contenders to lead the ruling Conservative Party and the country face a deadline of 2 p.m. local time to secure the endorsements of at least 100 of their party colleagues in Parliament (out of 357). Sunak has already cleared that bar. The other declared candidate is House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, but it is unclear if she could meet the threshold even if most of Johnson’s backers swung behind her.
3:31 AM: Penny Mordaunt is the dark horse contender
Penny Mordaunt, who has been serving as the Conservative leader in the House of Commons, is still in the race, but she remains far behind in declared endorsements. She will be hoping to pick up support from undeclared lawmakers and people who had declared their support for Boris Johnson before he dropped out Sunday night — though already some in the Johnson camp have said they will be backing Rishi Sunak.
Mordaunt was popular with the Conservative Party’s grass roots in the last leadership race, but she was knocked out of contention before party members got to weigh in. She was previously a junior trade minister and, briefly, the country’s first female defense secretary. She’s not well known among the broader public — in one survey, most respondents could not name her when shown her photo. But her visibility received a boost in the waning days of Truss’s tenure, when she stood in for the prime minister in Parliament. Perhaps her most memorable line was, “The prime minister is not under a desk.” But she ably handled hostile questions and showcased her parliamentary sparring skills.
By: Karla Adam
3:01 AM: Many Brits ‘exasperated’ with head-spinning political changes
“Quite scary.” “Fed up.” “Just unbelievable, really.” That’s how Britons described their attitudes toward the country’s head-spinning political changes, after Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister resigned. “It just feels so confusing,” Louise Barclay, who works in finance, said outside the London Bridge subway station. “We’ve always felt like we had a kind of stable system, and the last few months have been absolutely crazy.”
Many others also appeared to be grappling with the thought that their political landscape was more shambolic than they had imagined, a little over a month since the death of Britain’s longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. And politics aside, they voiced concerns about the future. Liz Truss’s abrupt resignation Thursday, only six weeks into her term, once again opened the race for someone to lead the country through record inflation, forecasts of a recession, and policy questions about immigration, climate change and the war in Ukraine.
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By: Ellen Francis
3:00 AM: How the next prime minister is being picked
The ruling Conservative Party has set an astonishingly short time frame to select a new leader, who will also become prime minister. Liz Truss announced her resignation on Thursday. The contest could be wrapped up today — and will be by the end of the week, at the latest.
In recent Conservative Party leadership contests, the transition of power has taken about two months, including several rounds of voting among the party’s lawmakers, followed by a period of campaigning around the country and a vote by dues-paying members of the party, who pick the winner between two finalists. But because the Conservatives just concluded that process last month, they rewrote the rules for their do-over contest. Contenders have until 2 p.m. Monday to get the singular backing of at least 100 Conservative lawmakers among the 357 in Parliament. If only one person clears that threshold, that’s it: The Tories have a new leader, to be installed as leader of the country. If two or three candidates qualify, the finalists will be determined through rounds of voting among Conservative Party lawmakers and then put to an online vote among the 170,000 dues-paying members of the party.
By: Karla Adam