Horse trading on the cards in race to succeed Truss

The race to succeed Liz Truss as British Prime Minister may be settled by horse trading in a matter of days, if the three frontline runners – Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt – can make a deal, feelers from within and outside the Conservative Party suggest at the weekend.

Truss, who made a 360 degrees U-turn from her Wednesday’s House of Commons defiant stance of being a ‘fighter, and not a quitter’ shocked the country by resigning the very next day, thus triggering a leadership contest to be decided within a week in the ruling party.

She entered record books as the shortest serving PM in British history, having spent just 44 days in office. Her predecessor, Johnson, who friends and foes agree is box office with voters, is currently second favourite in the battle to become the next PM, after being put forward by his supporters since Thursday. Sunak, who was Chancellor under Johnson and second in the election that brought in Truss, is currently the leading contender for Number 10.

However, the contest is still open for grabs and the party’s Members of Parliament , MPs, want both Johnson and his former Downing Street neighbour to do a deal in order to prevent the race going to the wire and being dragged before party members. If a deal can’t be worked out , the votes of the over 100, 000 registered party members will then decide who gets the keys to number 10 when Truss moves out later at the end of the week. But if the Conservatives MPs and the various camps unite to do some horse trading , the fate of the incoming PM will be decided by their over 350 Members of Parliament.

While on a BBC breakfast show on Sunday, a former party leader, Lord Ian Duncan Smith described Johnson as a “phenomenal campaigner” but when the host asked if he had made up his mind on who to support , his reply was “no.”

Calls from within the Conservatives party is for the duo of Johnson and Sunak to unite and by default , eliminate Mordaunt from the equation and also fend off the opposition’s cry of a general election. Labour Party want a general election , so as to capitalise on the divisions in the Conservatives , and perhaps grab power . But that can only happen if Conservatives MPs and the duo of Sunak and Johnson camps can’t do a deal at the table .

Though media reports suggested both might have reached out to each other , but no consensus seemed to have been reached and the divisions remain . Dominic Raab , MP, who served as foreign secretary and also deputy prime minister under Johnson, but now pitching his tent behind Sunak , is among the influential MPs who will rather the horse trading be in favour of the former chancellor than his former boss. He made his position known while being a BBC studio over the weekend.