British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak on Wednesday reached the final round of the race to choose a new leader for the ruling Conservative Party, to replace outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Initially 11 candidates fielded the race, but in the fifth and final vote for Tory lawmakers, Sunak won 137 out of 357 votes, compared to 113 for Truss and 105 for Benny Mordaunt.
The final leg of the race, which will last for weeks, pits Sunak, the former Goldman Sachs banker who has raised the tax burden to the highest level since the 1950s, against Truss, who supported Brexit and pledged to cut taxes and regulations.
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After the results of the vote were announced, Truss tweeted, "Thank you for trusting me. I'm ready to go from day one."
Meanwhile, Sunak said he is grateful that his colleagues put their trust in him today, stressing that he will work day and night to get their message across the country.
Opinion polls show Truss will beat Sunak in terms of party votes, but everything could change as the two contestants begin campaigning for weeks across the country in front of party members.
The Conservative Party, numbering about 175,000, will choose their new leader by mail vote over the next few weeks, with the winner being announced on the fifth of next September.
The current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, resigned from his position on July 13 as the leader of the Conservative Party, after a wave of resignations from his government team, but he will remain in office until a new prime minister takes over.
The parliamentary system adopted in Britain stipulates that the leader of the largest party represented in Parliament assumes the presidency of the government, and that he can be replaced before the end of the term without calling for general elections.