Can Penny Mordaunt make it onto the ballot?

Will Rishi Sunak be prime minister by teatime? After Boris Johnson announced that he would not enter the contest after all, the chances of a coronation have risen. Penny Mordaunt has 25 MPs publicly backing her – a long way short of the 100 required to make it onto the ballot. However, she still has an opportunity to get there.

Boris Johnson has somewhere in the region of 60 public supporters to play for (and more still if you go by his own figure of 102 backers). There are also just over 100 MPs yet to back anyone. That means there is a path to Mordaunt entering the contest. If she does secure the support of enough MPs, there would be an indicative vote to show how the two fared against one another before going to the membership for an online vote. If Mordaunt doesn't drop out, there could be a public hustings on Wednesday evening.

So will Boris Johnson's backers row in behind Mordaunt? While Nadhim Zahawi, Jonathan Gullis and James Duddridge all switched to backing Sunak after Johnson's announcement, other Boris backers are less inclined to follow suit. Red Wall MP Mark Jenkinson has said 'members must choose' and the party cuts them out of the process 'at our peril'. Michael Fabricant has taken to social media to say Sunak is unlikely to win if it goes to the membership – instead 'he needs a political coronation'. Meanwhile, John Redwood has said following Johnson's departure: 'As some Conservative MPs undermined the members choice of PM, members should be offered a choice of candidate this week with a ballot.' This suggests that several of Johnson's backers are now inclined to help get Mordaunt onto the ballot.

If Mordaunt gets there, will she go all the way? Whichever candidate came second in the indicative vote was always likely to come under pressure from some in the party to step aside before the vote went to the members. Few thought Boris Johnson would. Some MPs believe there is a better chance that Mordaunt would. Publicly, however, she has insisted she plans to fight on. The race is not over quite yet.