After Boris Johnson announced his withdrawal from the campaign to become the United Kingdom’s next Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has emerged as the frontrunner.
Among Conservative MPs, the former chancellor presently has the most declared supporters.
The focus now shifts to whether his remaining opponent, Penny Mordaunt, will satisfy the requisite 100 MPs when nominations end at 14:00 BST.
Mr Johnson withdrew from the race to succeed Liz Truss on Sunday.
The former prime minister – who was in No 10 until just seven weeks ago – claimed he had met the threshold required to stand but in a statement said “you cannot govern effectively unless you have a united party in Parliament”, adding that now was “simply not the right time”.
Many of Mr Johnson’s supporters were caught by surprise at his withdrawal. Essex MP James Duddridge, who gave the first indication that Mr Johnson was intending to run in the Tory leadership race, simply tweeted: “Well that was unexpected. Off to bed!”
With Mr Johnson out of the leadership race, several MPs have begun switching their nominations to the two remaining candidates.
Some 180 out of 357 Tory MPs have gone public with who they are backing, with Mr Sunak garnering support from 155 and Ms Mordaunt securing 25 backers.
Ms Mordaunt’s team said she was still in the running and within “touching distance” of getting enough backers, while Mr Sunak’s team said they were taking nothing for granted.
Damian Green, a former cabinet minister in Theresa May’s government and who is backing Ms Mordaunt, said her numbers are “well above” the published figure.
“We’re confident of getting to 100 before the deadline of two o’clock and putting to colleagues that the case that Penny is the person best positioned to unify the party,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
If she does reach 100 backers, the race could then go to an online ballot of Conservative Party members, with the winner of that being announced by Friday.
Mr Sunak is the firm favourite to replace Ms Truss as PM and could do so by as early as Monday afternoon if Ms Mordaunt fails to meet the benchmark.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who scrapped many of Ms Truss’s major economic plans announced in September’s mini-budget, has endorsed Mr Sunak.
In a piece in the Daily Telegraph on Monday, Mr Hunt said: “To restore stability and confidence, we need a leader who can be trusted to make difficult choices.
“We have a leader who can do just that in Rishi Sunak.”
He added that Mr Sunak had been “proved right” over his “unfunded tax cut” warnings during the summer’s Tory leadership campaign.
Whoever wins the race will be the UK’s third prime minister in less than two months.
But there are growing calls from opposition parties for an immediate general election – with Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner saying Mr Sunak had not given a public interview since the leadership process began.
“The Tories are about to hand Rishi Sunak the keys to the country without him saying a single word about how he would govern,” she said. “No one voted for this.
“Perhaps it’s not surprising he’s avoiding scrutiny: after all, he was so bad that just a few weeks ago he was trounced by Liz Truss.
“It’s why we need an election now – people deserve a vote on the future of the country.”
SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford also said Tory MPs should put pressure on their next leader to immediately call for a general election.
“That the Tories can foist upon us a third prime minister in just three years without an election, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and economic crisis of their making, speaks to how unfair and undemocratic this Westminster system is,” he said.
Former culture secretary Nadine Dorries has said it would now be impossible to avoid a general election, taking aim at the remaining two candidates.
Ms Dorries, a long-time ally of Mr Johnson, tweeted that Mr Sunak and Ms Mordaunt, “despite requests from Boris, refused to unite, which would have made governing utterly impossible”.
Ms Truss, who replaced Mr Johnson in No 10 following a lengthy leadership campaign in the summer, resigned as prime minister after 45 days in office marked by turmoil. She will become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history when she stands down.