Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is set to succeed Liz Truss as Conservative party leader, and thus UK Prime Minister, as Penny Mordaunt pulled out of the leadership race.
The country’s third PM in a year was announced by Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories, in the wake of the 2pm deadline for nominations.
Truss herself congratulated Sunak, expressing her "full support" to the incoming prime minister.
The 42-year-old former finance minister delivered his first public speech to the nation shortly after Mordaunt refused to further take part in the leadership race, leaving him the sole contender.
"We now need stability and unity, and I will make it my utmost priority to bring our party and our country together because that is the only way we will overcome the challenges we face," he said.
After Boris Johnson’s dramatic exit from the Tory leadership race on Sunday night, and after would-be candidate Penny Mordaunt failed to garner the required number of at least 100 nominations from Conservative MPs, Rishi Sunak, became the frontrunner in the race.
If Sunak and Mordaunt had both received more than 100 nominations, it would have fallen to the 150,000 Tory party members to decide the result.
Sunak, who came second in the race to No 10 against Liz Truss over the summer, drummed up 178 Tory supporters by Monday, including Cabinet Office minister Nadhim Zahawi and Foreign Secretary James Cleverley.
Following Johnson’s withdrawal, Sunak praised the ex-PM, underscoring on Twitter that Johnson “delivered Brexit and the great vaccine roll-out” and “led our country through some of the toughest challenges we have ever faced.”
Britain would “always be grateful to him for that,” he wrote.
Johnson issued a statement on October 23, saying, “In the course of the last days I have sadly come to the conclusion that this would simply not be the right thing to do,” adding, “You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.”
The developments left Penny Mordaunt, who was unable to reach the previous contest’s run-off, falling short of just eight votes, under pressure to concede.
"Rishi has my full support. I am proud of the campaign we ran and grateful to all those, across all sides of our [Conservative] party, who gave me their backing," Mordaunt said on Twitter.
Rishi Sunak, who launched his official campaign on Sunday, vowed that “fixing the economy” was his priority. The former chancellor promised to reunite the divided Tory party, pledging there would be “integrity, professionalism and accountability” in a government run by him.