Will Liz Truss succeed Boris Johnson? Expect the unexpected

A Conservative Party leadership election was under way long before Boris Johnson eventually bowed to the inevitable. Even before the Chris Pincher scandal became the straw that broke the party’s back, Johnson’s potential successors had been wooing Tory backbenchers.

“I’ve never had so many invites for coffee, drinks or a chat from people suddenly interested in me,” one newbie Tory MP quipped. “They have been on manoeuvres for weeks.” Some candidates expected Johnson to limp on until the autumn. Now the wooing will go into overdrive.

The field will be very wide – about 10 candidates are already in the frame – although some will test the water and decide not to run when they do not muster enough support. For now, the outcome is unpredictable.

Previous Tory leadership contests teach us that they often hinge on stopping someone that a majority of Tory MPs don’t want, rather than giving an overwhelming endorsement of the winner. After challenging Margaret Thatcher, Michael Heseltine was blocked and John Major unexpectedly became prime minister. Ken Clarke, the best prime minister of his generation we never had, was thwarted three times for being too pro-EU.

This time the one to stop will be Liz Truss. The foreign secretary, who has kept an uncharacteristically low profile in recent days, is cutting short her trip to Bali for a meeting of G20 foreign ministers. She is a darling of the Tory grassroots, which have the final say on choosing the leader. But crucially, the shortlist of two names who go into the members’ ballot is drawn up by Tory MPs in a series of exhaustive ballots.

Truss’ pitch will be the tax cuts that many Tories crave, if necessary funded by borrowing, and the tough line against the EU she has displayed on the Northern Ireland protocol. But she enjoys much less support among MPs than the membership; some regard her as a lightweight, dislike what they call her “Margaret Thatcher tribute act” and distrust her on Brexit as a 2016 Remainer who now has the zeal of the convert. One Tory MP admitted to me: “If she got on the shortlist she could win. So we will stop her [from] getting on the list.”

In the MPs’ voting rounds, campaign teams can move blocks of votes around to suit their interests; in 2019, it is thought that Johnson allies ensured he faced a Remainer in Jeremy Hunt in the run-off, rather than fellow Leaver Michael Gove. Hunt beat Gove by just two votes in the fifth and final round of voting by MPs. The magic figure this time for a place in the members’ ballot will be the votes of 120 of the 360 Tory MPs.

The only exception to the two-stage rule is if Tory MPs can agree on a single candidate. This happened in 2003, when the MPs rallied behind Michael Howard after booting out Iain Duncan Smith. But with so many Tories fancying their chances and no clear frontrunner, a sudden outbreak of unity is unlikely this time.

While Truss is likely to be blocked, it is less easy to predict who might benefit. Another lesson from history is that an outsider often wins – such as Thatcher, Major and David Cameron. The dark horse this time could be Nadhim Zahawi. The man who told Johnson to stand down just a day after being appointed chancellor joined the cabinet only last September but his record as vaccines minister will persuade some MPs he can stand and then deliver. He will compete with Truss for the Tory tax-cutters’ vote.

We know relatively little about the views of some likely candidates. Tories say Ben Wallace, the defence secretary and a long-time Johnson ally, is having a “good war” on Ukraine but he has little ministerial experience on the domestic front. However, a YouGov poll today puts him in first place among Tory members.

The two ministers who sparked the tide of resignations, Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid, could both run. They might be rewarded for their bravery and bringing down the curtain on what some Tories are calling "the Johnson s***show".

But some Johnson admirers will not forgive their disloyalty. Sunak’s friends think he has bounced back after a bad first half of the year. He does have a clear philosophy, unlike some rivals: his appeal will be the fiscal responsibility he believes Johnson lacked, meaning tax cuts only when the deficit has been brought under control. Javid will point to his unusually wide experience in six cabinet posts, but he has run for the leadership twice before without success.

One candidate with a unique selling point is Penny Mordaunt, the international trade minister and a semi-detached member of the Johnson government: she is a Brexiteer but also a social liberal, potentially giving her a wide reach in the party. Allies claim she has 50 MPs on board but critics suspect her campaign will not take off due to lack of support.

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A surprise early runner is Suella Braverman, the attorney general. The former chair of the European Research Group of hardline Brexiteers will pledge to exploit “the opportunities of Brexit” in a way Johnson failed to do. This will appeal to a band of Eurosceptics who want the UK to become a low-tax “Singapore-on-Thames”. But Braverman is unlikely to survive the MPs’ voting rounds. She could face a rival for the hardline Brexiteers’ vote from Steve Baker, an arch-plotter who chairs the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group. It is not certain either will win; some Tories will run up their flag but then withdraw to support another candidate in the hope of winning a big ministerial job.

Some in Toryland think all those who served under Johnson are tainted by it and say voters would welcome a fresh start under a clean pair of hands. Jeremy Hunt, the former health and foreign secretary, will likely be the candidate of One Nation Tories.  But the former Remainer was beaten by Johnson by a 2-1 margin three years ago and Tory members might not want to admit they got it wrong. Another One Nation figure who might run is Tom Tugendhat, a Johnson critic who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee.  But the party is unlikely to elect someone with no ministerial experience; Tugendhat might be putting down a marker for a future leadership contest.

The most important rule of Tory leadership elections is that the favourite rarely wins. As one senior party figure put it: “Expect the unexpected.”