Boris Johnson will be succeeded as prime minister of the United Kingdom by either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss after the Conservative Party leadership race was on Wednesday narrowed down to the final two candidates,
CNN reports.
Johnson resigned as party leader earlier this month after a series of scandals led to dozens of ministerial resignations. Ten Conservatives stood in the contest to replace him, and over five rounds of voting, members of parliament whittled those down to two.
Sunak won 137 votes and Truss got 113 votes in the final round, while Penny Mordaunt with 105 votes lost out.
Both of the final two candidates took to Twitter to comment on the result.
"Grateful that my colleagues have put their trust in me today. I will work night and day to deliver our message around the country," tweeted Sunak.
For her part, Truss tweeted: "Thank you for putting your trust in me. I'm ready to hit the ground running from day one."
Now about 160,000 rank-and-file members of the party will have their say, and in September the winner -- and next prime minister -- will be announced.
Both candidates who made it to the final two in the Conservative party leadership contest served in Johnson's government, and could therefore be marred by the scandals that brought Johnson down.
The first was Johnson whipping his members of parliament to protect a political ally found to have breached lobbying rules, and ended with revelations that Johnson appointed as his deputy chief whip Chris Pincher, a man who'd been accused of sexual assault multiple times.
The best known scandal was "Partygate" in which Johnson and several political allies -- including Sunak -- were fined by police for breaching the government's own Covid-19 restrictions. This made Johnson the first premier in history to be found guilty of having broken the law in office.
The task facing the final two candidates is enormous enough, with the UK suffering a cost-of-living crisis and the Conservative Party increasingly unpopular after 12 years in power. And as soon as the new leader takes over, the opposition Labour Party will be only too willing to remind whoever succeeds Johnson that they were part of that government.
