Former Tory MP Ruth Davidson said she was surprised by early results in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader.
Priti Patel was eliminated from the contest on Wednesday, with Robert Jenrick emerging as frontrunner with 28 votes in the first ballot of MPs, ahead of bookmakers’ favourite Kemi Badenoch, who got 22.
Shadow home secretary James Cleverly was one vote behind on 21, with shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat on 17 and shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride on 16.
Speaking on the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Ms Davidson said she thought Mr Stride would be the first to drop out.
“I was surprised. I think we’d all sort of thought that Mel Stride would be the first to go. So, apologies to Mel, we got that one wrong,” she said.
“He’s obviously got a bit more support within the parliamentary party than we expected. I think what was interesting about Priti is she had, I think, wanted to be kind of the vote of the right, but also the Borisites within the party.
“And Boris was a dog that didn’t bark in the first round of the election. Quite clearly you could see his hand in the last one between Rishi and Liz Truss, being on Liz’s side.
“So that was quite interesting to me.”
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Whoever does win will need to get used to opposition “quickly”, added Ms Davidson, who was in opposition in Scotland.
“I think for somebody that spent their entire political life in opposition, you know, the bit of advice that I would give to any of them is get your head around the change from government to opposition and do it quickly because you are going to have to hustle,” she said.
“People are not going to want to cover you. You know, the government’s got the levers. It’s pulling them. It will speak to them. You are going to have to work your socks off to even get in the papers.”
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