Liz Truss gains ground on Penny Mordaunt as Rishi Sunak forges on

July 18, 2022

Now the race for No10 is too close to call… Liz Truss gains ground on Penny Mordaunt but Kemi Badenoch is STILL in the hunt as Rishi Sunak cements front runner status – and Tom Tugendhat is the latest knocked out

Tory MPs have voted again in the third round of the leadership race with another hopeful facing elimination
The final Tory leadership TV debate before run-off was slated for tomorrow night but has now been cancelled
The five surviving Conservative leadership contenders faced off in another televised debate last night
Snap poll found Rishi Sunak seen to have won the brutal clashes but Liz Truss has gained ground on rivals
Penny Mordaunt vented her anger at ‘smears’ amid pressure from rivals about her gender rights stance
Ex-Chancellor front runner but Ms Truss, Ms Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch battling for second slot in run-off

The race for No10 stepped up a gear tonight with Liz Truss gaining ground on rival Penny Mordaunt – as frontrunner Rishi Sunak closed in on a guaranteed place in the run-off ballot.

The Foreign Secretary seemed to pick up some of eliminated Attorney General Suella Braverman’s backers in the third round of voting by MPs, going up from 64 to 71, but far from enough to move into second place.

Meanwhile, Ms Mordaunt suffered a body blow as she dropped a vote to 82 and seems to be struggling to maintain the momentum in her campaign as she faces more attacks over her stance on gender issues.

Tory leadership contest – round three result

Rishi Sunak: 115 votes

Penny Mordaunt: 82 votes

Liz Truss: 71 votes

Kemi Badenoch: 58 votes

Tom Tugendhat: 31 votes – eliminated

Crucially only the top pair go forward to the run-off among Tory members.

However, Kemi Badenoch – initially regarded as an outsider – is still in the hunt after racking another nine endorsements, taking her to 58.

Some votes were up for grabs as MPs drifted away from Tom Tugendhat, who has been knocked out after coming bottom with 30.

Mr Sunak’s team had feared he would not add much to his tally, instead anticipating that he could benefit from Mr Tugendhat’s departure. But in the event they were jubilant as he increased his score from 101 to 115.

Anything over 120 guarantees a place in the final two, as there are 358 Conservative MPs in total.

The focus now moves to the fourth round of voting tomorrow, and whether Ms Badenoch can overhaul at least one rival to stay in the race.

A spokesman for the Truss campaign said: ‘Liz is the candidate to lead a bold new economic approach, cut taxes, deliver on the benefits of Brexit, unite the Party and win a General Election.

‘Tom Tugendhat ran a campaign that he can be very proud of and he has shown the depth of quality in the Conservative Party.

‘Now is the time to get behind the best candidate to deliver the economic change we need.’

A Sunak spokeswoman said: ‘Rishi has done well today because he is the candidate with the clearest plan to restore trust, rebuild the economy, reunite the country and because he is best placed to beat Labour at the next election.’

Mr Tugendhat said: ‘I want to thank my team, colleagues and, most of all, the British people for their support. I have been overwhelmed by the response we have received across the country. People are ready for a clean start and our party must deliver on it and put trust back into politics.

‘I wish the remaining candidates well and look forward to continuing to serve the British people and fully supporting the next leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.’

The intense intrigue at Westminster comes after it emerged that the candidates have endured their final TV debate in this phase. Sky News cancelled their showdown after both Mr Sunak and Ms Truss pulled out, with sources saying they wanted to limit infighting.

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are still in the leadership battle as it enters the final stages before going to a ballot of Tory members

Penny Mordaunt was installed as the surprise front runner, but her campaign appears to be struggling to keep momentum

Kemi Badenoch has exceeded expectations with her campaign, backed by former Cabinet minister Michael Gove

The third round result was announced in parliament by 1922 committee chair Sir Graham Brady

Transport commitee chair Huw Merriman tweeted a photo of Mr Sunak at Conservative Environment Network hustings today

A snap poll by Opinium found that the former Chancellor emerged on top from the extraordinary blue-on-blue session on ITV, cementing his status as the front runner

HOW THE TORY LEADERSHIP RACE WILL PLAY OUT

Today – A third ballot of Tory MPs was held with Tom Tugendhat coming bottom and being eliminated.

Tomorrow – Another ballot will be held to whittle the numbers down to three.

Wednesday: Assuming no-one drops out, a fifth ballot will decide the final pair, ending the parliamentary phase of the contest.

21st July – MPs will head away from Westminster for their summer break.

Late July and August – CCHQ will assume responsibility for leadership election and will send out ballot papers to around 200,000 Conservative Party members. The Tory grassroots will be asked to decide between the final two candidates, with hustings events to be held across the UK.

5th September – The result of the membership ballot is announced, with the candidate receiving more than 50 per cent of the vote being declared the new Tory leader and Boris Johnson’s replacement as Prime Minister.

6th September – The new Tory leader is likely to be formally appointed as PM during a visit to the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

7th September – The new PM is set to be quizzed in the House of Commons in their first ever Prime Minister’s Questions.

George Freeman, a key supporter of Ms Mordaunt, tried to put a brave face on the results, predicting that she will pick up ‘a lot’ of Mr Tugendhat’s supporters now that he has exited the contest.

He told Sky News: ‘After the three days’ pounding she’s had in the media, to be honest I’m delighted she’s held second place.

‘Nobody has been attacked so savagely in the Tory press than Penny Mordaunt and her support is strong.

‘I think the story tonight is Kemi Badenoch is becoming the heroine on the right, she’s picked up a lot of votes.

‘I think what you’ll see now is a lot of that One Nation support base for Tom Tugendhat… I think a lot of them will come to Penny as the One Nation compassionate Conservative.’

Worryingly for Ms Mordaunt, one of Mr Tugendhat’s key allies Anne-Marie Trevelyan said she expected his supporters would ‘travel as a pack’ on who to endorse next.

And she reiterated her criticism of Ms Mordaunt’s performance as a trade minister, saying colleagues had to ‘pick up the pieces’ while she spent months plotting a leadership bid.

Earlier, a backer of Mr Sunak predicted that it was going to be ‘quite a tough day for us in terms of the ballot, because if you look at the free votes sort of floating around from the candidate that got knocked out last week, I think it’s probably fair to say that we’re not going to pick up very many of those, I suspect’.

‘So assuming everybody else votes for who they voted for… I wouldn’t expect our vote to massively increase today,’ they said.

Mr Sunak and Ms Truss are widely expected to be in the top three after the next rounds of voting, meaning that the programme might only have been left with one candidate.

There are claims that supporters of Ms Truss were alarmed about the level of ‘squabbling’ in the two debates so far, and regard the Channel 4 one in particular as a ‘mistake’.

A statement from Sky News read: ‘Two of the three candidates currently leading in the MPs ballots, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, have confirmed to Sky News that they do not want to take part.

‘Conservative MPs are said to be concerned about the damage the debates are doing to the image of the Conservative Party, exposing disagreements and splits within the party.

‘Both are very welcome to taking part in future Sky News televised debates.’

A source on the Sunak campaign said: ‘We are very happy to do more debates if we are lucky enough to get to the next stage.’

They insisted Mr Sunak had never confirmed with Sky that he would be taking part.

In a statement that was issued and then swiftly replaced with a toned-down version, the Mordaunt campaign jibed that her opponents were ‘dodging’ and renewed complaints about smears.

‘Penny’s always happy to debate with the other candidates at any time. Throughout this contest she has never dodged media or shied away from broadcast interviews and debates,’ the statement said.

‘It’s a shame some colleagues cannot find a way to debate one another in a civil way.’

Keir Starmer said he was ‘astonished’ by the withdrawals, saying it demonstrated a lack of ‘confidence’.

Conservative MPs whittled the number of candidates down from five to four in the wake of clashes on ITV that saw Mr Sunak brand Ms Truss ‘Socialist’ for ignoring the need to balance the books, as she slated his tax hikes.

A snap poll by Opinium found that the former Chancellor emerged on top from the extraordinary blue-on-blue session on ITV, cementing his status as the front runner.

But Ms Truss seems to be gaining ground after a more assured performance, while Penny Mordaunt struggles to maintain her early momentum. Kemi Badenoch is also still giving a strong showing, with MPs due to decide within days which two candidates will go forward to a ballot of party members.

Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat is the favourite to be eliminated tonight, despite polling well among floating voters with his ‘clean start’ pitch.

The 1,000 people surveyed by Opinium found that 24 per cent thought Mr Sunak came out on top in the debate, with Mr Tugendhat second on 19 per cent, Ms Mordaunt third on 17 per cent, narrowly ahead of Ms Truss on 15 per cent and Ms Badenoch’s 12 per cent.

Mr Sunak was also the choice of Tory voters, although the advantage was only 24 per cent to 21 per cent for Ms Mordaunt and 20 per cent for Ms Truss – a major improvement for the Foreign Secretary after her stuttering turn in the first debate.

Mr Sunak attacked Ms Truss for promising ‘something for nothing’ tax cuts during the clashes, as well as asking ‘which she regrets most’ out of backing Remain in the referendum and previously being a Liberal Democrat.

Ms Truss accused Mr Sunak of ‘business as usual’ economic management and ‘choking off growth’ by increasing the tax burden to the highest level in 70 years, insisting she had argued against the national insurance hike in Cabinet.

She accused the former chancellor of encouraging a recession by raising taxes, adding that his approach was ‘preventing companies from investing and it’s taking money out of people’s pockets’.

But Mr Sunak retorted that the country had been through a once-in-a-century pandemic and there was a ‘cost to these things’.

‘I’d love to stand here and say ”look, I’ll cut this tax, that tax and another tax and it will all be okay”. But you know what? It won’t,’ he said.

‘There’s a cost to these things and the cost of higher inflation, higher mortgage rates, eroded savings. And you know what? This something for nothing economics isn’t Conservative. It’s Socialism.’

He added that Ms Mordaunt was proposing to drop one of his fiscal rules against borrowing to fund day-to-day spending, saying ‘even Jeremy Corbyn didn’t suggest that we should go that far’. ‘If we are not for sound money what is the point of the Conservative party?’ he said.

When Mr Sunak goaded her over voting Remain and being a Lib Dem in the past, Ms Truss admitted she had been ‘on a political journey’ and had a dig at his privileged public school education. ‘The reason I am a Conservative is that I saw kids at my school being let down in Leeds – perhaps not getting the opportunities you had at your school, Rishi.’

All five contenders were asked by host Julie Etchingham to raise their hands if they wanted Boris Johnson to serve in their government. None did – although Ms Mordaunt did interject that Mr Johnson ‘got Brexit done’.

Trade minister Ms Mordaunt also slapped back at ‘smears’ about her views on trans rights, denying that she had tried to rewrite history about supporting self-identification with medical assessment. She said she ‘knows why this is being done’ but any attempt to paint her as ‘out of touch’ will ‘fail’.

In other notable clashes during the debate:

Mr Sunak insisted he had never had non-dom tax status but pointed out his billionaire heiress wife was from India, and said he was ‘incredibly proud’ that his father-in-law had ‘built’ a highly successful business from nothing;
Ms Truss took a backhanded swipe at Mr Sunak’s style, saying she is ‘not the slickest presenter on this stage… I’ve shown I can deliver as Foreign Secretary’;
All the hopefuls dismissed the idea of a snap general election when the new PM takes over, saying the focus should be on addressing the cost of living;
The would-be PMs were asked to put up their hands if they backed Brexit at the referendum, with Ms Truss unable to say she did;
Mr Tugendhat said all the other candidates were tainted by having served in Boris Johnson’s government.

Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat and Penny Mordaunt (pictured left to right) clashed in the second televised Tory leader showdown last night

RISHI SUNAK

On tax cuts:

This something for nothing economics isn’t Conservative. It’s Socialism…

‘If we are not for sound money what is the point of the Conservative party?’ he said.

LIZ TRUSS

On the tax burden:

‘It is cutting back on growth. It is preventing companies from investing and it’s taking money out of people’s pockets. That is no way to get the economy going during a recession.’

PENNY MORDAUNT

On cost-of-living crisis:

‘I think people listening at home will be looking at us, debating these issues. And it seems that we’re removed from the real problems that they are facing, they need some immediate action now, I don’t understand why Rishi doesn’t accept that.’

TOM TUGENDHAT

On ministers being tainted by Boris Johnson:

‘Whatever your responsibility was in that government, whatever your place in that government was, Keir Starmer in two years’ time is going to hold that record against us.’

KEMI BADENOCH

Slapping down Tugendhat:

‘Serving in Government is not easy. It requires taking difficult decisions. Tom has never done that. It’s very easy for him to criticise what we’ve been doing, but we have been out there on the frontline making the case.’

In brutal exchanges on tax, Ms Truss said Britain is predicted to experience a recession due to Mr Sunak’s policies.

‘Rishi, you have raised taxes to the highest level in 70 years. That is not going to drive economic growth,’ she said.

‘You raised national insurance, even though people like me opposed it in Cabinet at the time because we could have afforded to fund the NHS through general taxation.

‘The fact is that raising taxes at this moment will choke off economic growth; it will prevent us getting the revenue we need to pay off the debt.’

Ms Mordaunt also waded in to say she disagreed with Mr Sunak, adding: ‘I think the tax cuts I’ve outlined are not inflationary.

‘But I also think there’s things we can do that don’t cost any money, making things work better for people. That’s why I’ve introduced the childcare policy that I have.

‘Making tax simpler so that it reduces the costs that businesses are having to pay just to be tax compliant. There’s many things we can do.’

Ms Badenoch said the candidates needed to be ‘honest’ with the public about the nation’s economic future.

She added: ‘I think what we’re seeing in the discussion that’s taking place is that there are no easy options. There are no solutions, only trade-offs. When I was working in the Treasury, it was always a choice between difficult option A, terrible option B or mad option C.

‘We need to be honest with the public about how difficult things are. The Government can’t solve everything and we need to do better at it in terms of the way that we fix things.’

Responding to Ms Mordaunt’s point, Mr Sunak said he ‘does take the situation seriously’.

He added: ‘I heard Penny on the TV this morning saying you were going to scrap one of my rules that the Government shouldn’t borrow for day-to-day spending.

‘Now look, it’s one thing to borrow for long-term investment, but it’s a whole other thing to put the day-to-day bills on the country’s credit card and we know how that ends. It’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous. And you know what, even Jeremy Corbyn didn’t suggest that we should go that far.’

Ms Truss tackled head-on concerns that she can come across as wooden.

She said: ‘I’m somebody who says what I think, I’m honest, I was brought up in Yorkshire – I say what I mean and I mean what I say.

‘I’m somebody that, when I promise to deliver something, I do deliver it.’

In a swipe at Mr Sunak, she said that was ‘one of the reasons I was so concerned about us breaking our manifesto on national insurance, because we committed to the British public that we would do it’ – the Tories had promised in 2019 not to increase the tax.

She added: ‘I might not be the slickest presenter on this stage, but I think my colleagues understand in Parliament when I work with them that when I say I’ll do something, I do it.’

Ms Truss challenged Rishi Sunak on whether he still believed the UK should do more business with China despite human rights abuses in places like Hong Kong.

Mr Sunak told her at the ITV debate: ‘I actually support the view of the Integrated Review, the plan that you and I both sat around the Cabinet table and helped draft, which highlighted that China was an enormous threat to our national security, and that’s the lens in which we should view it.’

Mr Sunak said the Government was taking the ‘powers and the protections’ needed to safeguard the country from ‘hostile investment’.

He defended his wife Akshata’s previous non-domiciled tax status and her family’s wealth during the ITV debate.

He said he is ‘really proud’ of how his billionaire father-in-law NR Narayana Murthy, who launched IT services company Infosys, made his fortune.

Mr Sunak said: ‘So I’ve always been a completely normal UK taxpayer, my wife is from another country so she’s treated differently, but she explained that in the spring and she resolved that issue, but there is commentary about my wife’s family’s wealth.

‘So let me just address that head on, because I’m actually incredibly proud of what my parents-in-law built.

‘My father-in-law came from absolutely nothing, just had a dream and a couple of hundreds pounds that my mother-in-law’s savings provided him, and with that he went on to build one of the world’s largest, most respected, most successful companies that by the way employs thousands of people here in the United Kingdom.

‘It’s an incredibly Conservative story, actually it’s a story I’m really proud of and as prime minister I want to ensure that we can create more stories like theirs here at home.’

Ms Badenoch reiterated that she had been responsible for reversing the trans policy put in place by Ms Mordaunt as equalities minister.

‘I’m saying that when I took on the role of equalities minister, we had to change the existing Government policy which previous ministers had put in place,’ Ms Badenoch said.

‘What I’m challenging or what I challenged Penny on is what that policy was. She is saying she did not agree with it, but I don’t understand how that would be the case if she had been the previous minister. If she didn’t agree with it, why was the policy as it was?’

Ms Mordaunt replied: ‘I wasn’t the previous minister. The stuff in the papers today demonstrates what my policy was and refutes this. I think this whole thing is unedifying, and I would just say to all four of my other colleagues and candidates here, I know why this is being done.

‘But what I would say to you is that all attempts to paint me as an out-of-touch individual will fail. I’m the only person on this stage that has won and fought a Labour seat. My constituents do not elect people who are out of touch.’

Ms Badenoch responded: ‘Penny I was just telling the truth. I’m telling the truth.’

Foreign Affairs committee chair Mr Tugendhat talked up his ‘clean start’ offer, saying those who served in Mr Johnson’s government ‘lent credibility to the chaos’.

He said: ‘Whatever your responsibility was in that government, whatever your place in that government was, Keir Starmer in two years’ time is going to hold that record against us.

‘We need to make sure we’re winning Conservative seats across the country, and even really good people lend credibility to the chaos candidate.’

But Ms Badenoch responded that she was ‘not ashamed of anything we did’ while she was a minister.

‘We have a lot to be proud of. We got Brexit done, and what the Prime Minister did on Ukraine and on vaccines was fantastic,’ she said.

Mr Tugendhat pointed out he had been on the frontline in Afghanistan, Iraq and ‘in the argument against Putin and China.’

However, Ms Badenoch responded: ‘You haven’t taken any decisions, talking is easy.’

All the candidates backed the target to reach Net Zero by 2050 apart from Ms Badenoch – who said she would change elements that ‘make life difficult’ for ordinary people.

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