Candidates to replace Boris Johnson as Britain's prime minister scattered tax-cutting promises to their Conservative Party electorate on Monday, as party officials set out rules to narrow the crowded field of almost a dozen candidates to two contenders by next week.
Little-known junior minister Rehman Chishti became the 11th candidate to declare he wants to succeed Johnson, who quit as Conservative leader on Thursday amid a party revolt triggered by months of ethics scandals. Other contenders include Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, Treasury chief Nadhim Zahawi, trade minister Penny Mordaunt, former health secretaries Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt, and backbench lawmakers Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch.
Candidates will need to be nominated by at least 20 lawmakers to get onto the first ballot, a number that may knock out some contenders before voting even starts. In the wide-open leadership contest, contenders are striving to set themselves apart from the perceived front-runner Sunak, who already has the backing of more than three dozen lawmakers.
Sunak, whose resignation on Tuesday helped topple Johnson, has cast himself as the candidate of fiscal probity, and warned rivals not to tell the public “comforting fairy tales.” None has so far renounced Johnson's most contentious policies: Legislation to rip up parts of its Brexit deal with the EU, and a plan to send some asylum-seekers arriving in Britain to Rwanda that is being challenged in the courts.
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