Given there are few things MPs enjoy more than amateur electoral game theory and claims of dirty tricks, the next 24 hours are shaping up to be quite an experience for the Conservative parliamentary party – not to mention for the rest of us. After the elimination of Kemi Badenoch on Tuesday afternoon, one thing seems clear: barring a fairly extraordinary upset, Rishi Sunak is home and hosed in the battle to become one of the two candidates put to Conservative members to select a new party leader, and thus the UK’s prime minister. The former chancellor has now reached 118 MPs’ votes, just one short of what is needed to guarantee a spot in the next part of the process. The magic figure had been 120, but with Tobias Ellwood losing the party whip, and thus his vote, it is 119. Team Sunak would have hoped to reach this mark in Tuesday’s penultimate voting round, but his allies point out that he has remained first throughout, gaining ground every time, and to complain would be churlish. Similarly, for all the genuine upset among supporters of Badenoch, her exit was widely predicted. Gaining a peak of 59 votes in the fourth round is an excellent result for someone who has never been in the cabinet, and now almost certainly will be under the new prime minister.
The likelihood of that PM being Liz Truss was notably greater on Tuesday than it was a day before, with the foreign secretary bouncing back from a sluggish campaign to gain 15 votes, leaving her just six behind second-placed Penny Mordaunt and with a notably greater sense of momentum. Quite how Truss, the self-reinvented queen of Brexit and small state 21st-century Thatcherism, seemingly picked up notably more of the 31 votes from Tom Tugendhat, eliminated in the third round, than did the more Tugendhat-friendly Mordaunt, has unleashed a torrent of conspiracy theories. For what it is worth, Team Sunak and other camps deny formal vote lending as a way to game the result, for example giving Sunak a run-off against a candidate he might feel – rightly or wrongly – he can beat in the members’ ballot. Such tactics would be fraught with peril, not least because Sunak is hardly in a position to lend chunks of votes. Additionally, it is by no means clear he is more likely to defeat either Mordaunt or Truss – in fact the polling indicates he would lose to both. More plausible is that as candidates are eliminated, their former supporters vote tactically, whether to favour a second-best or upset the chances of a foe. Many do this individually, some after chats with colleagues, some even in small groups. The net result is extreme unpredictability.
Looking ahead to Wednesday’s crucial and – barring an unlikely tie – final round of MPs’ votes, Truss appears to be in a good position to overtake Mordaunt, an international trade minister, and catapult herself into the crucial second place at the very last opportunity. Badenoch’s exit left 59 votes up for grabs, and while the former levelling up minister had her differences with Truss, she and Mordaunt clashed brutally in TV debates, notably over Mordaunt’s (relatively) liberal views on social issues. Steve Baker, who was one of Badenoch’s main supporters, made it plain as he briefed reporters in a sweltering Commons corridor after Tuesday’s vote: “I would have thought that most of the people who are attracted to Kemi, they’ll mostly not be attracted to Penny.” So are we set for a Sunak v Truss runoff? Logic points that way. But much about this race so far has defied logic. The heatwave might be about to end, but the intrigue and double-dealing has another, sweaty-palmed day to go.