Knockout day in Tory leadership race as MPs to vote out 'candidate they don't want'

Crucial Wednesday ballot described as 'moving day' after which last two candidates will emerge

Conservative Party members will chose between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak in the race to become Britain's next prime minister, after Penny Mordaunt was eliminated. PA

Rishi Sunak — former chancellor who resigned from his position last week. In a slick campaign video he said the government could not afford to fool voters about the difficulties ahead with ‘comforting fairy tales’. Getty Images

Liz Truss — the UK’s Foreign Secretary has pledged to start cutting taxes 'from day one' if she becomes prime minister, to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. She has also vowed to ‘take the vital steps necessary’ to protect the Good Friday Agreement. Getty Images

OUT OF THE RACE: Penny Mordaunt — Brexit-backing Trade Minister has insisted the Conservative Party was elected to ‘deliver a manifesto’. She played a prominent role in the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum. Reuters

OUT OF THE RACE: Kemi Badenoch — former equalities minister has promised 'limited government' and 'a focus on the essentials'. She has said Boris Johnson was 'a symptom of the problems we face, not the cause of them'. Photo: UK Parliament

OUT OF THE RACE: Tom Tugendhat —Foreign Affairs Committee chairman and ‘Remainer’ aims to reverse the national insurance rise. He says the presence of Brexit party and Leave figures on his team is reassuring for Brexiteers. Reuters

OUT OF THE RACE: Suella Braverman — current Attorney General has promised 'rapid and large tax cuts' to ease inflation. She has said the energy crisis means 'we must suspend the all-consuming desire to achieve net zero by 2050'. Reuters

OUT OF THE RACE: Nadhim Zahawi — newly appointed Chancellor has promised to cut taxes and push ahead with the reforms he started in his previous role as education secretary, to ‘deliver a great education for every child’. PA

OUT OF THE RACE: Jeremy Hunt — runner-up to Boris Johnson in the 2019 leadership race, who has pledged to slash corporation tax to 15 per cent. He has also promised to back the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. AFP

OUT OF THE RACE: Rehman Chishti — newly appointed Foreign Office minister had spoken of the importance of lower taxes and having a small state with a big society. 'It’s about aspirational conservatism, it’s about fresh ideas and then it comes down to having a fresh team.' Getty Images

OUT OF THE RACE: Sajid Javid — experienced former health secretary had planned to scrap the government’s national insurance increase, bring forward the proposed 1p income tax cut to next year and introduce a further ‘significant’ temporary reduction on fuel duty. PA

OUT OF THE RACE: Grant Shapps — the Transport Secretary had said on TV: 'I am interested in the bread-and-butter issues that your viewers will be thinking about every single day of the week.' AP

The outcome of the Conservative Party leadership race for Britain’s next prime minister was hanging on a knife edge on Wednesday after the fourth ballot of MPs.

The fight for second spot is now difficult to determine, with Liz Truss potentially edging ahead of Penny Mordaunt as the favourite.

Whoever wins that race will almost certainly be up against Rishi Sunak but with the latest polling showing that both women are far ahead of beating the former chancellor among the Conservative membership, either could end up as prime minister.

Key to whoever wins that race will be how the 59 MPs who backed Kemi Badenoch decide to vote. There is some expectation that the majority of them will go for the Foreign Secretary Ms Truss, who attracted a significant 15 new backers taking her to 86 votes.

She is now only six votes behind the early favourite Ms Mordaunt, whose vote base increased by 10 to 92.

Mr Sunak landed a marginal three vote increase in his share, achieving 118 backers which would leave him only two short of achieving the magic 120 needed to guarantee a second round spot.

Those supporting Ms Badenoch are thought to be a mixed group of MPs and it is unclear which way their 59 votes will be split between the three remaining candidates.

Ms Mordaunt had been expected to receive the majority of Tom Tugendhat’s 31 votes after he was eliminated on Monday but it did not turn out that way.

The three candidates made their final pitches to MPs before Wednesday's vote, with Mr Sunak promising Tory members that he would keep wind farms away from their homes even as he promised to pursue energy independence by 2045.

Ms Mordaunt made a raft of policy statements including plans for a tougher line on China, digitalisation of the public sector, reforms to the housing market and powers to stop the release of violent criminals.

And Ms Truss put her focus on tax cuts and bringing down the cost of living, in an article for the Daily Telegraph in which she said she was the "only person who can deliver the change... in line with true Conservative principles".

To guarantee a spot in the last two, Ms Mordaunt, a former defence secretary, will need half of Ms Badenoch’s votes.

But there is also the possibility that some MPs may well change their minds at the last minute, making the outcome unpredictable even for Mr Sunak.

“Tomorrow’s vote is what I refer to as ‘moving day’, in which everyone will decide who they don’t want rather than who do they want,” said the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, who backs Ms Truss. “Momentum matters in this contest and I’m sorry for Kemi that she is out — this is a really brutal business — but I think momentum is with Liz now.”

With the margins so tight, each vote counts and the unexpected removal of the party whip from Tobias Ellwood for not attending Monday’s no-confidence vote could be significant.

Mr Ellwood, who was in Moldova for discussions on the Ukraine war but not on official government business, will not be eligible to vote.

He was an outspoken critic of Mr Johnson’s leadership and removing the whip is considered a final act of revenge.

The outcome for the final pair will be announced at 4pm on Wednesday. The contest is then opened up to the estimated 160,000 Tory membership who will vote by postal ballot with the winner declared on September 5.

Badenoch goes from unknown to real prospect

The rise of Kemi Badenoch and her growing popularity among grass root Conservatives had been a remarkable revelation in the Tory leadership contest.

The 42-year-old came from being virtually unknown to nationwide recognition during the television debates in which her no-nonsense straight talking won praise.

This drew the Conservative heavyweight thinker Michael Gove to act as a campaign chief, realising the prospect of a rising star.

“She has three qualities which are what any new leader or any new prime minister will need — courage, conviction and clarity,” he told a Policy Exchange event on Tuesday.

Ms Badenoch, whose parents are Nigerian, is unrepentantly right wing — hard on immigration, uncompromising on the deportations of illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda and anti-woke.

The MP for Saffron Walden, Essex, who was in a tranche of ministers who resigned over Boris Johnson’s lack of integrity, set out her thinking in a widely read piece in The Times.

“People are exhausted by platitudes and empty rhetoric,” she wrote, adding that “an intellectual grasp of what is required to run the country" is missing.

She also lamented the decline of the West. “Without change the Conservative Party, Britain and the western world will continue to drift" and rivals will "outpace us economically and outmanoeuvre us internationally”, she wrote.

Her rise is also an interesting commentary on the diversity of the Conservative Party, which has traditionally been a white, male-dominated party. It will now either have a female or ethnic minority man as its next leader and prime minister.

UK Conservatives on the leadership campaign trail - in pictures