British foreign secretary Liz Truss narrowed the gap with trade minister Penny Mordaunt in the battle to stay in the race to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The two battled to join former chancellor Rishi Sunak in the final stage of the race to be the next leader of the Conservative party and the UK Prime Minister.

In the latest round of voting by 358 Tory MPs on Monday, Sunak led the race with the support of 115 MPs. His votes saw an increase of 14 from the previous voting round. Sunak is now short of five votes to reach the 120-mark required to guarantee him a place in the final run-off.

Mordaunt, who is being considered a surprise insurgent of the contest, remained in second place with support from 82 MPs. According to some Tory MPs, Mordaunt is losing momentum in the contest following her lacklustre performances in two recent televised debates.

Truss, who suffered as rocky start, raised her game in Sunday’s debate, picking up 71 votes from Conservative MPs. This is an increase of seven in the latest round of voting from 64 in the previous round.

Who is Liz Truss?

Liz Truss, 46, is often dubbed by some fans as the 'new Iron Lady' as she appeared to emulate Margaret Thatcher in her first leadership battle.

Mary Elizabeth Truss was born in Oxford on July 26, 1975, to John Kenneth Truss, a professor of mathematics at the University of Leeds, and Priscilla Mary, a nurse, teacher and member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

She moved to Scotland at the age of four and attended West Primary School in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and Roundhay School. She studied politics, philosophy and economics at Merton College, Oxford, where she held the post of president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats.

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She joined the Conservative Party in 1996 as soon as she graduated. She worked as a commercial manager at Shell and became the economic director of Cable & Wireless.

Truss married Hugh O’Leary in 2000. She first contested elections in 2010 as the Tory candidate for South West Norfolk and won. She has been holding the seat ever since.

Soon after entering Parliament, Truss started climbing up the ministerial ladder, holding various cabinet positions under the leadership of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

However, she rose to prominence when she travelled to Moscow to meet her Kremlin counterpart Sergei Lavrov earlier this year, hoping to persuade Russia to pull back from the brink of the war with Ukraine.

As the second female foreign secretary in history of Britain, her key achievements include securing the release of Iranian-British dual citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from detention in Iran and introducing a slew of sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.

If she is voted as the leader of Conservatives, Truss has vowed to bring about the biggest economic change that the UK has witnessed in 30 years. Hoping to adopt a ‘bold new approach’ to confront the economic crisis that the UK is going through, Truss vowed a radical overhaul of the taxation system, reversing the National Insurance rise brought in by rival contender Rishi Sunak. She also vowed to roll back the scheduled corporation tax hike from 19 percent to 25 percent.

Sunak has ridiculed her plans as ‘fairytale economics’.

Who is Penny Mordaunt?

Penny Mordaunt is being considered the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Johnson as the British Prime Minister. If she makes it to the last two Conservative Party contestants, Mordaunt stands a good chance of winning, The Economist reported, quoting surveys conducted by ConservativeHome, an independent, right-wing blog, and pollster YouGov which pitched her as a favourite among members.

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Although not a household name in the UK, Mordaunt rose to prominence through her appointments in several ministerial posts in recent years, including minister for local government, minister for women and equalities and defence secretary.

Penelope Mordaunt was born in Torquay in March 1973. Her father John, who once served as a paratrooper with the Parachute Regiment, named her after Navy cruiser HMS Penelope.

John later retrained as a teacher and youth worker, while her mother Jennifer worked as a special needs teacher.

Mordaunt grew up in Hampshire with her twin brother James and younger brother Edward.

According to Mordaunt, her ‘love and pride’ in Britain was kindled at the age of nine in Portsmouth while watching ships set sail for war in the Falklands.

Her mother died of breast cancer when she was 15 and her father fell ill the following year, leaving her as her younger brother's primary carer. Mordaunt worked as a magician’s assistant and studied philosophy at the University of Reading.

She also went to Romania where she worked at orphanages and hospitals during the 1989 revolution that toppled the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.

Her political career took off in November 2003 when she was selected as a Conservative candidate in the Portsmouth North constituency. Although Mordaunt managed to swing 5.5 percent votes towards the Conservatives, she lost to Labour candidate Sarah McCarthy-Fry. She was re-selected in January 2006 for the same constituency and at the 2010 general election, when she won with a majority of 7,289 votes.

Under the premierships of David Cameron and Theresa May, Mordaunt served as armed-forces minister, international-development secretary and defence secretary. In 2019, she supported Jeremy Hunt over Boris Johnson in the Conservative leadership contest. According to her allies, this left her out of favour of Johnson, The Economist reported. Since then, she held more junior positions, as paymaster-general and trade minister.

Her supporters believe the hard-working and dutiful Mordaunt would be an antidote to Johnson’s scandal-filled tenure.

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(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)