RISHI Sunak has set up a leadership campaign office in a London hotel, reports say.
The former chancellor resigned from Boris Johnson's government on Tuesday evening, helping precipitate the deluge of MPs which would follow into Thursday.
A total of 59 ministers, aides, trade envoys, and Cabinet secretaries have resigned from Johnson's government in just two days.
With his administration crippled, the Prime Minister was left with no choice but to announce his resignation, but he has declined to actually leave No 10 until a replacement Tory leader is chosen.
Speculation has been mounting about who could replace Johnson both in the short term, as interim leader, and in the long term as the next prime minister.
Attorney General Suella Braverman was one of the first to throw her hat into the ring, doing so without having left the Cabinet and before Johnson had even announced his resignation.
Polling from Ipsos MORI has suggested that Braverman may have little hope of winning, while other potential candidates such as Ben Wallace, Liz Truss, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Priti Patel, Nadhim Zahawi, Michael Gove and Penny Mordaunt all enjoy roughly similar perceptions among the public.
The same polling, of 1050 British adults on July 7, found that Sunak is the politician which most people think would do a good job as prime minister.
The former chancellor (on 31%) narrowly beat Sajid Javid (29%) and Labour leader Keir Starmer (30%) on this metric.
Looking to capitalise on his slight edge, Sunak has set up a leadership campaign headquarters in a Westminster hotel, according to reports from the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar.
The former chancellor had been tipped to replace Johnson before news broke that his wife, billionaire heiress Akshata Murthy, claimed “non-domiciled” status to pay less tax in the UK despite living on Downing Street.
It also broke that Sunak had held a US green card while serving as chancellor of the UK.
While legal, the news was thought to have impacted on his chances of taking on the prime minister role. A popularity chart run by ConservativeHome saw Sunak plunge from the top to the very bottom in the wake of the tax affair.
The news that he has set up a campaign HQ in a central London hotel room may further impact on his reputation. Sunak, believed to be the richest man in the House of Commons, may struggle to come across as a man of the people.
