Explained: Why Rishi Sunak will find it difficult to become PM despite being favourite of Tory MPs

Rishi Sunak seems to be sitting pretty in the race to become British prime minister.

The Indian-origin former UK chancellor topped Tuesday’s round of voting to edge even closer to his place as one of two candidates who will go head-to-head to be elected the new Conservative Party leader and British prime minister.

The British Indian former Chancellor received 118 votes in the fourth round of voting by his party colleagues, just shy of the 120-mark – or one-third of Conservative Party MPs – needed to confirm his place as one of the final contenders in the race to replace Boris Johnson.

He increased his tally from Monday’s 115, while Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt got 92 votes and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss 86 votes leaving the race to clinch second place still open. Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, crashed out with 59 votes.

However, Sunak is actually facing an uphill battle to become prime minister.

Let’s take a closer look at why:

Sunak to struggle in run-off shows poll

While Sunak remains the front-runner, it seems he will have a tough time overcoming either Mordaunt or Truss – both of whom are scrambling to grab that all-important second spot by wooing the considerable number of Tory MPs who supported Badenoch –  in the final stage of the contest when rank and file party members get to vote.

At least that’s what a YouGov poll of Conservative Party members published by Sky News shows.

The YouGov poll shows Sunak trailing Truss by 19 points and Mordaunt by 14 points in a run-off.

The final two candidates will be known after a fifth round of voting on Wednesday, at the end of which the race will be taken over by the Conservative Party headquarters to organise hustings in different parts of the UK.

Over 160,000 Conservative Party members who are in general whiter, older and more right-wing than the general public will vote in the run-off over the summer.

Those votes will be counted towards the end of August for the winner to be announced by September 5, with the new incumbent at 10 Downing Street going on to address his or her first Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons on 7 September.

"It's a very tight race and at this point, impossible to call," the BBC reported after Tuesday's voting won by Sunak, the son-in-law of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy.

History shows Sunak may struggle

A look at history also shows Sunak might struggle to overcome the final hurdle.

A piece in News18 noted several instances of conservative leadership challenges ending with a surprise victor.

Alec Douglas-Home, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May were not favourites but they all became prime ministers of the UK, the piece noted.

While John Major, Theresa May and Alec Douglas-Home were selected by the Tories who were in power, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron had to win the general election.

Sunak could also be tripped up by the unforeseen.

Sky News has also reported rumours of dossiers and dirty tricks that could be used to tank one of the campaigns as the gossip in the MPs' tearoom goes into overdrive.

“As we go into the final ballot, this is anything but a clean or clear race. What we do know for sure is that the man winning with MPs is, according to polling, losing with party members, so all three have everything still to play for and everything to lose,” the piece concluded.

Sunak woos Tory voters

All of which is why, The Times of India noted, Sunak has spent the past few days appealing directly to the Tory party base.

On Sunday, Sunak released a second campaign video calling himself a “real Brexiteer”, showing how he backed Brexit from Day One even though he was under pressure not to by the then PM David Cameron, and how he campaigned for Leave during the 2016 EU Referendum.

Sunak in the clip slams Truss for voting remain.

Sunak on Monday vowed new laws to ensure grooming gang crimes never get repeated and promised to make his first foreign trip to Kyiv to offer support to President Zelensky, both of which will go down well with the grassroots, the newspaper reported.

This comes after Sunak previously took to Twitter and vowing to protect ‘women’s rights’.

The former UK chancellor had linked to a piece quoting an unnamed Sunak ally as saying that Sunak was "critical of recent trends to erase women via the use of clumsy, gender-neutral language."

The ally said Sunak would create a manifesto that would oppose trans women competing in women's sport and "will call on schools to be more careful in how they teach on issues of sex and gender." “We must be able to call a mother a mother and talk about breastfeeding,” the ally said, as per Daily Mail.

“He believes we must be able to call a mother a mother and talk about breastfeeding, alongside trans-inclusive language where needed,” the ally added.

“Under his leadership, sex education will be sensitive and age-appropriate, so we enable children to have a childhood. He also recognises that women are still shouldering a disproportionate burden of family life, so will look again at child care and make sure public services are family-friendly,” the ally was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

It has been an intense few weeks for the Tory party since Johnson resigned on 7 July, following the resignation of Sunak and multiple other Cabinet ministers who said they had lost confidence in his leadership in the wake of a series of scandals at the heart of his government.

Johnson chaired his final Cabinet meeting as a caretaker Prime Minister this week and is expected to take his place as a backbench Tory MP when Parliament resumes under a new Tory leader in September.

With inputs from agencies

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