UK

Rishi Sunak looks set for Number 10 as Boris Johnson abandons leadership race

Former Conservative Party leader only got 60 MPs to back him, 40 short of the 100 required to be on the ticket

Rishi Sunak outside his home in London, following the resignation of Liz Truss as Prime Minister on Friday, October 21. Photograph: PA

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Harry McGee in London
Sun Oct 23 2022 - 15:46

Boris Johnson’s meek departure from the leadership race last night could not have been more different than his dramatic return from his Caribbean holidays on Saturday morning. He had hoped that his return to the UK might have given thrust to his campaign and propelled him back to a premiership he had lost only eight weeks before.

The reality was that Johnson’s campaign was over even before the rubber hit the runway in Gatwick Airport. As Rishi Sunak’s pledges kept spiralling upwards, Johnson’s support during Saturday and Sunday spluttered and then faded out.

By the time he threw in the towel, he had 60 public backers, still 40 short of the 100 required to be on the ticket. Behind him, Penny Mordaunt was doing even worse, stuck on 24 since Friday. By contrast, Sunak had 150 public endorsements in the bag by the time Johnson threw in the towel just before 9pm on Sunday night.

His campaign team insisted all day Sunday he had 100 MPs backing him but some could not just go public.

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That was vigorously challenged by Sunak supporters. “If Boris Johnson has 100 in the bag, why is his campaign putting out pictures of him begging for votes?” asked Sunak supporter Robert Syms in a tweet. “Just asking for a friend,” he added caustically.

“Clearly he is going to stand,” insisted ever-loyal Jacob Rees-Mogg on Sunday. “Those who do the numbers for the Boris Johnson campaign tell me that they have the numbers.”

Did he? In his statement on Sunday night he insisted he had secured what was required. “I can confirm that I have cleared the very high hurdle of 102 nominations, including a proposer and seconder, and I could put in my nomination,” he said. He also claimed he would have had a “very good chance” of success if the party’s 150,000 members voted on Friday, a process that would have been triggered had there been more than one candidate with 100 nominations.

He ceded, he said, for the sake of party unity and because he had reached out to both his rivals, but neither had responded. Deep in the statement there was also a tacit admission that now was not the right time for him.

Sunak was so far ahead of Johnson that even if he had wheeled the scrum with the membership and got elected by the grassroots, he would have then led a parliamentary party that was overwhelmingly hostile, or negative, or dubious of his ability to see the country through the gravest economic and existential crisis it has faced in a generation.

Rather, the clear majority of MPs sided with Sunak. He had predicted the calumnies that would happen once Liz Truss’s economic plans were implemented. In his statement, he presented himself as a leader who would be sober, rational, sensible, reliable, and professional. Not Boris Johnson in other words. And that’s what the Tory MPs seem to want at this moment of time.

At this stage it looks like a coronation for Rishi Sunak. There is, of course, Penny Mordaunt, who is still in the race. However, she will need all of Johnson’s backers to switch to her and then find perhaps a dozen others. It’s a very tall order indeed to achieve by 2pm on Monday. But given the psychodrama (as they all call it over here) that has played out in the Tory Party over the past month, anything is possible.

Johnson might have made the numbers but it would have been by the skin of his teeth. Those who were loyal to him in the past sided with Sunak this time.

Three prominent MPs associated with the right have rowed strongly behind Sunak: international trade secretary Kemi Badenoch, former home secretary Suella Braverman, and Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker.

Badenoch’s endorsement of Sunak included an unspoken criticism of Johnson: “Rishi’s fiscal conservatism meant saying no to many cabinet colleagues, which, I suspect, is the reason a large number were opposed to his becoming prime minister. Right now, being able to say no is what we need.”

There were also difficulties facing Johnson over the lockdown parties held in Downing Street and that has become a factor. The House of Commons Committee of Privileges is investigating allegations he misled parliament. This was a real problem.

Baker was one of many Sunak supporters who referenced this: “If there was a vote in the House of Commons, it is guaranteed that a large number of Conservatives would refuse to lay down their integrity to save him. At that moment his premiership would collapse,” he predicted.

Many senior Tory figures on Sunday night – including former Brexit secretary Lord David Frost – urged Johnson not to stand, saying the time was wrong, and that he was the wrong leader at this very difficult time for the country. “The zeitgeist of the country is now a very different place from 2019,” observed veteran Conservative MP Crispin Blunt. Mr Johnson’s own statement, in the end, did include a reference to it not being the right time.

There is a possibility that Johnson could make a Hasta La Vista Baby return at a future stage. If Labour win the next election and if the Tories start tanking in opinion polls, the time might then be right for this form of energetic and bombastic warm-up act that goes down well with Tory supporters.

In the meantime, Rishi Sunak gets to correct what he considers the injustice of the summer when the party membership usurped his victory in the first round of MPs.

He’s the youngest prime minister in 300 years. He’s the first prime minister of colour. He is also extremely wealthy which might raise questions about his level of understanding of, and empathy with, the millions of Britons who have been hardest hit with the chaos of the last two months.

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