Rishi Sunak out in front as British PM race narrows down to three candidates

LONDON: Rishi Sunak topped another round of voting on Tuesday to edge even closer to his place as one of two candidates who will go head-to-head to be elected the new Conservative Party leader and British Prime Minister, as Kemi Badenoch became the latest candidate to be eliminated from the race.
The British Indian former Chancellor received 118 votes in the fourth round of voting by his party colleagues, just shy of the 120-mark - or one-third of Conservative Party MPs - needed to confirm his place as one of the final contenders in the race to replace Boris Johnson.

He increased his tally from Monday's 115, while Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt got 92 votes and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss 86 votes leaving the race to clinch second place still open. The vote means that Britain will get either its first British Asian prime minister or the third female leader in the country's history.
The elimination of former equalities minister Badenoch with 59 votes will now turn the focus on where her considerable support within the Tory members of Parliament will go, as those MPs are wooed by both Mordaunt and Truss to shore up their chances of grabbing that all-important second spot.
Final two
Sunak, whose resignation helped to topple outgoing leader Boris Johnson, is all but guaranteed to make the final cut in Wednesday's last round of voting by MPs.

But the race to join him further tightened, with Truss making up five votes on Mordaunt -- the one-time bookmaker's favourite.
Truss is now only six behind, and will hope that the right wing of the party swings behind her following the departure of Badenoch, a favourite of the grassroots members.
A YouGov poll published before the vote showed that Badenoch would beat the remaining candidates with the all-important members, and that Sunak would lose to them by wide margins. Mordaunt had headed the same poll previously.

She now trails Truss after a damaging few days in which her former boss, one-time UK Brexit pointman David Frost, slammed her work ethic and questions were raised over her stance on trans rights.
September deadline
The final two candidates will be known after a fifth round of voting on Wednesday, at the end of which the race will be taken over by the Conservative Party headquarters to organise hustings in different parts of the UK.
The focus will then be on convincing the Tory party membership base, estimated at around 160,000 voters, to cast their ballots in favour of one of the two remaining candidates.
Those votes will be counted towards the end of August for the winner to be announced by September 5, with the new incumbent at 10 Downing Street going on to address his or her first Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons on September 7.
(With inputs from agencies)
Watch Rishi Sunak tops third round of voting for new UK PM, only 4 remain in race