London: The resignation of Liz Truss as British prime minister on Thursday triggered another leadership race, the second in just four months for Britain’s fragmented and demoralized Conservative Party.
Truss, who stepped down after only 45 days in office, said his successor would be chosen in a leadership contest to be completed by the end of next week. Graham Brady, a senior Conservative MP overseeing the party’s leadership challenges, said each candidate would have to receive 100 nominations from legislators to run and that the race would end by next Friday.
Former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, former cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among the credible contenders for the top post. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson may also return. Jeremy Hunt, who has been brought in as the new Treasury chief to steer the economy, has refused to run.
Whoever wins will become the fifth British Prime Minister in six years.
Here’s a look at potential runners and riders:
Rishi Sunak, Former Treasurer
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Sunak, 42, second only to Truss in the previous Conservative leadership race, received 60,399 votes compared to 81,326.
He stepped down as Treasury chief in July in protest against the leadership of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In the race for leadership following Johnson’s resignation, Sunak has positioned himself as the candidate who tells the harsh truth about Britain’s public finances. He argued that ascent inflation should be controlled first, and the promises made by Truss and other rivals immediately called reckless “fairy tale”.
The craze proved right when Truss’s tax-cut economic stimulus package tanked the British pound and caused chaos in the markets in September.
Sunak became Treasury chief in 2020 and propelled Britain’s recessionary economy through the coronavirus pandemic. He oversaw billions of pounds in government handouts to help businesses and workers affected by COVID-19.
Sunak was long considered the Conservative’s brightest rising star. Born to Indian parents who emigrated from East Africa to Britain, Sunak attended the exclusive private school at Winchester College and attended Oxford. Some see his elite education and work as a liability to the investment bank Goldman Sachs and a hedge fund because it leaves him out of touch with the general electorate.
Over the past year he has faced heavy criticism for being slow to respond to Britain’s livelihood crisis. His reputation also took a hit after he was fined by police for attending a birthday party in Downing Street in June 2020.
Some criticized him even after the revelation that his wife Akshata Murthy avoided paying taxes on his foreign income.
Penny Mordaunt, House of Commons Leader
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Mordant, 49, came in third behind Sunk and Truss in the previous Tory leadership race when she ran with a campaign called “PM4PM”. Mordaunt had not held a senior position in Johnson’s cabinet, and had positioned himself as offering a clean break from his scandal-tainted government.
A former international trade minister, Mordent is popular among Conservative lawmakers. Some believe that she may be the right candidate to help heal the party’s divisions. But he is an unknown figure to most Britons, and outside Conservative circles he appeared on the 2014 reality TV show “Splash!” Best known for appearing in
Mordent played a major role in the pro-Brexit campaign. She was the first woman to become British Defense Secretary in 2019 – although she was removed from office by Johnson after just three months after she endorsed another candidate for party leader Jeremy Hunt.
Suella Braverman, former Home Secretary
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Braverman, 42, resigned as home secretary late Wednesday, following a scathing letter criticizing the “turbulent” premiership of the truce. His move started a chaotic night in British politics that ended in Truss’s resignation hours later.
Braverman, a former barrister who became England’s attorney general in 2020, puts on his hat in the ring during this summer’s leadership race to replace Johnson.
During his short stint as Home Secretary, a top government post overseeing immigration and counter-terrorism, Braverman vowed to crack down on asylum seekers, saying it was his “dream” to visit Britain. I wanted to see a flight deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. She also wanted Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
She made headlines, and was ridiculed by detractors, when she recently complained in parliament that left-wing, “tofu-eating Wokerites” were to be blamed for travel disruptions caused by trade union strikes.
Ben Wallace, Secretary of Defense
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Wallace, a 52-year-old military veteran, is popular within the Conservative Party. He has won fans for his straight talk, especially among conservative MPs who have pressured the UK to increase its defense spending.
Wallace has raised his profile as a leading government voice in Britain’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. But he recently said that he wants to continue in his current job. Earlier this week, when asked if he wanted the top job, he reportedly said “I want to be Secretary of State for Defense until I finish”.
Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister
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There was intense speculation on Thursday that Johnson might return and put himself forward as prime minister again, just weeks after he was thrown out of office by a series of ethical scandals.
Within hours of Truss’s resignation, many of Johnson’s conservative aides expressed their support for his return.
“The only person to get a mandate from the general public is Boris Johnson,” said one legislator, Marco Longhi. “He is the only person who can discharge the mandate from the people.”
Johnson’s leadership suffered from scandals over alcohol-fueled parties held at his official residence while national COVID-19 restrictions were in place. He still faces an ongoing investigation by Parliament’s Committee of Privileges into whether he lied to MPs about breaking COVID-rules on Downing Street.
He was forced to announce his resignation on 7 July after former colleagues in his cabinet joined a mass exodus of government officials who opposed his leadership.