After Penny Mordaunt dropped out two minutes before the 2 PM deadline, Rishi Sunak was formally chosen as the next leader of the Conservative Party. Since the announcement of Priti Patel earlier that morning that she was backing Sunak, it was clear the Leader of the House of Commons would not have the mass movement of former Boris Johnson supporters that she required.
Ahead of becoming the UK’s first British Asian Prime Minister – and its youngest for more than 200 years – the next day, Sunak told Tory MPs the party must “unite or die”, vowed that he wanted a government of “all the talents”, and pledged to bring “stability and unity” to the country. He began drawing up plans for his Cabinet, as Michael Gove was tipped for a return.
With acknowledgments to Harry Cole and James Heale‘s Out of the Blue: the Inside Story of the Unexpected Rise and Rapid Fall of Liz Truss