- Penny Mordaunt is backing for Liz Truss boosts her campaign to become leader.
- The trade minister finished third, behind Truss and ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak.
- Liam Fox, a former foreign trade minister who ran twice for Tory leader, introduced Mr Sunak.
Penny Mordaunt is backing for Liz Truss boosts her campaign to become leader.
The trade minister finished third, behind Truss and ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak.
Ms. Mordaunt labelled Ms. Truss the “hope candidate” during a leadership discussion.
She added if party members make the incorrect decision, they may “lose an election.”
Sunak and Truss are seeking for Conservative Party members’ votes to become the next Tory leader and British prime minister.
The party’s 160,000 members received ballots on Monday; the outcome is expected on 5 September, when Boris Johnson leaves government.
Mr Sunak and Ms Truss attended their second hustings – a live debate in front of voters – in Exeter, after several heated clashes on TV in recent weeks.
Tax policy has become the main battleground, while both have announced a string of competing policy proposals to woo Conservative members.
Ms. Mordaunt is the third member of the cabinet to support Ms. Truss. She joins Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi in doing so.
In the meantime, senior Tory MPs like former cabinet ministers Liam Fox and Damian Green have backed Mr. Sunak.
Ms. Mordaunt said at the event, which was along the south coast from her own Portsmouth North constituency, that choosing between the two candidates was hard, but it was “too important” to “leave this to chance.”
She said, “When this contest’s final round started, I didn’t know the answers to those questions, but I’ve seen enough to know who I’m going to trust, and that’s Liz Truss.”
Members of the Conservative Party cheered when they heard the news. Ms. Mordaunt then praised Ms. Truss and said, “She is the hope candidate for me.”
In her opening speech, Ms Truss said Ms Mordaunt was “a great patriot and I’m proud to call her my friend”.
The warm words marked a change in tone, after allies of Ms Mordaunt accused Ms Truss’s team of a dirty-tricks campaign to block her from reaching the final stage of the leadership contest.
Liam Fox, a former foreign trade minister who ran twice for Tory leader, introduced Mr Sunak.
Fox suggested Sunak could win over swing votes and prevent a Labour-SNP combination from “tearing our country apart.”
“We will need a leader and a prime minister with the correct ideas, certainly, but with character, guts, experience, knowledge, and decency to win back those votes,” Mr. Fox said. “I think Rishi Sunak will be PM.”
During the epidemic, Mr. Sunak made “tough but important choices,” including introducing the furlough programme, he said.
