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Rishi Sunak took a huge step toward becoming the UK’s next prime minister as former premier Boris Johnson pulled out of the contest after a weekend of vacillation and as he won the endorsement of Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt.
In a brief statement on Twitter late Sunday — shortly after Johnson said he wouldn’t stand for fear of dividing the Conservative Party — Sunak vowed to lead with “integrity, professionalism and accountability” if he won the race for No. 10 Downing Street.
Johnson’s decision, days after he cut short a Caribbean holiday to get his political campaign going, leaves Sunak facing House of Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt in what is now a two-person race. Sunak, a former chancellor whose resignation in July led to Johnson’s ultimate downfall, gained the public support of several key ministers on Sunday including Grant Shapps and — on the Tory right — Suella Braverman.
Sunak has at least 123 lawmakers behind him, compared to Johnson’s 51 named backers, according to Bloomberg’s tally, which counts only 23 for Mordaunt. In his statement, Johnson said he had the support of at least 102 MPs, enough to have taken the contest to a ballot of party members who have sided with Johnson in the past.
The issue now is how many of Johnson’s camp, including Brexit hardliners such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, will throw their lot in with Mordaunt and ensure the race continues beyond Monday. According to odds at political betting site Smarkets, Sunak is a near certainty to become Britain’s fourth prime minister in three years.
But whoever wins faces the task of trying to bring unity to a party that has been through months of upheaval and bruising public infighting. Conservative support has fallen well behind the Labour opposition in polls as a brutal cost-of-living squeeze and soaring inflation darkens the economic outlook.
The pound extended gains after Johnson said he wouldn’t stand, rallying as much as 1.0% to $1.1401 in Asia on expectations that a potential Sunak premiership would be better qualified at trying to fix the nation’s finances.
Sunak will “turn the page on what went wrong, take decisions in the national interest and rebuild the extraordinary potential of our economy,” Hunt said in a column for the Telegraph late Sunday.
