Liz Truss frontrunner to succeed Boris Johnson as Conservative leader
Foreign secretary Liz Truss has emerged as the frontrunner to succeed prime minister Boris Johnson among Conservative party leaders, a new poll has revealed.
Truss, the former trade secretary until Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle in Septmber, has inched ahead of chancellor Rishi Sunak, according to a Survey by Conservative Home.
A little over 23 per cent of Tory party members would opt for the foreign secretary to take over the helm, compared with the 20 per cent who would like to see Sunak in power.
The foreign secretary has surpassed Sunak in recent months, with a Conservative Home poll in August finding that the chancellor was the favoured lead by nearly 20 percentage points.
It follows Johnson and the Conservative party tanking in YouGov polls, amid a string of sleaze allegations.
Last week, more than 70 per cent of those polled by YouGov thought that Johnson was ‘doing badly’ as prime minister, which had increased by seven points since late November.
Just 23 per cent of those polled said that Johnson’s premiership is going well.
The government’s approval rating has also sunk three points, YouGov found, with 60 per cent of those polled disapproving of its current performance.
The party scandal, which saw Johnson’s top aide Allegra Stratton resign after caught joking about what was allegedly an illegal event, quickly followed allegations of Tory ‘sleaze’ after the Owen Patterson debacle.
Both had prompted widespread public anger.