O VOO DO CORVO

 

Rishi Sunak praises Boris Johnson’s withdrawal as nominations deadline looms – UK politics live

32m ago

03.02 EDT

Andrew Sparrow

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/oct/24/uk-politics-live-rishi-sunak-penny-mordaunt-boris-johnson-withdrawal-nominations-deadline-tory-leadership-contest-race

 

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Helen Sullivan, on a morning when the UK wakes up to learn that one national icon is staging a comeback, but it’s David Tennant at Dr Who (see 6.44am), not Boris Johnson as prime minister. News does not always have to be depressing.

 

And it looks very, very likely that by the end of the day Rishi Sunak will be the next prime minister. New prime ministers seem to come along quite regularly now, but this will be a more historic handover than the last. If he does become PM, Sunak will be the first minority ethnic MP to hold the post. It will be the first time since 1940 that a new PM has taken over for the second time since the previous general election. And it will be the first time since 1834 that the we’ve had three prime ministers in year.

 

Sunak may also become PM despite have said almost nothing in public about how he intends to govern – although, since he was a candidate in the summer, we do have a policy platform that he set out recently.

 

We will know soon after 2pm whether or not that is the outcome. That is the time when nominations close and Penny Mordaunt, the only other candidate still in the contest, is struggling to collect 100 names. Since Boris Johnson pulled out of the contest last night, we’ve seen more of his supporters back Sunak than Mordaunt.

 

We don’t have timings yet, but if Mordaunt fails to get the 100 nominations, or pulls out, then it is possible that Sunak could have an audience with the King later this afternoon to be asked to form a government. He could be doing a speech from No 10 before nightfall.

 

If Mordaunt does get 100 nominations, there will be a hustings for Tory MPs at 2.30pm, and then they will have an “indicative vote”. This is so that members will know how much support each candidate has amongst MPs. The person coming second (almost certainly Mordaunt) would be under pressure to withdraw at that point, although theoretically the decision could still go to a ballot of members, in which case we would not have a new PM until Friday.