5 candidates left in UK leadership race, Sunak still leads

LONDON, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Five candidates made it to the next ballot round in the race to be the leader of the Conservative Party and replace outgoing Boris Johnson as prime minister of the United Kingdom (UK) after the second round of voting finished on Thursday.

Rishi Sunak, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, topped the second round with 101 votes from the Tory lawmakers, according to the Conservative Party backbench 1922 Committee, which runs the leadership contest. He won the first ballot on Wednesday.

The other four survivors are International Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt (83 votes); Foreign Secretary Liz Truss (64 votes); former Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch (49 votes); and backbench lawmaker Tom Tugendhat (32 votes).

Attorney General Suella Braverman was eliminated from the contest as she received the least support.

The third ballot is scheduled on Monday and the 1922 Committee aims to whittle down the field to two candidates in successive rounds of voting before the British parliamentarians break up for the summer recess on July 21.

The final two contenders will then go through a postal ballot of all the Conservative members, numbering around 200,000, over the summer and the winner will be announced on Sept.5, becoming the new Tory leader and the UK's next prime minister.

A YouGov poll published Wednesday showed that Mordaunt was the favorite among Conservative Party members, beating any of the others in a head-to-head run-off.

The Tory leadership race was triggered after Johnson was forced to bow to the inevitable last week by an avalanche of resignations of cabinet ministers and other junior government officials who protested against his scandal-plagued leadership. Johnson continues to serve as caretaker prime minister until a new Tory leader succeeds him.