Rishi Sunak has dropped to the fourth spot as the Conservatives' top choice to succeed Boris Johnson as UK PM. Wild card candidate Kemi Badenoch is now leading. The Conservative Home poll of 851 Tory party members gave Badenoch an 11-point lead. Foreign secretary Liz Truss beat junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt to second place at 20%. Penny Mordaunt was third at 18% and Sunak was fourth at 17%. Sunak was nine votes behind Mordaunt. Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat was in fifth place. This puts the view of the Tory grassroots at odds with a large chunk of Conservative MPs for whom Sunak is the clear frontrunner so far. Sunak secured the backing of 101 MPs in the second ballot and 88 votes in the first ballot, and was the top contender in both. It is the party members who get to make the final decision on their next leader and the future PM once Tory MPs have whittled down the candidates to the final two. The 41-year-old former Equalities minister Badenoch who is leading the race was born in London to Nigerian parents. She spent her youth living in Lagos and the USA. Badenoch’s self-styled ‘anti-woke’, small government pitch has won her plenty of admirers on the Right of the party, even among those who are backing another candidate. She resigned as equalities minister alongside dozens of others in the week Johnson stood down.