Just five MPs are still in the running to be the leader of the Tory party after Boris Johnson announced he would be resigning last week.
Tonight, July 15, the candidates will go head to head in a leadership debate live on Channel 4.
Rishi Sunak came out on top during the first round of the Conservatives leadership race on Thursday (July 14), but his position has quickly been dwindling and now it looks like Penny Mordaunt is the new front runner.
Mordaunt was the second most popular candidate with 83 votes, but a poll of Conservative party members suggests that she has the biggest backing.
The survey from Conservative Home found that Mordaunt had the support of almost 20% of Tory members, meanwhile Sunak dropped to third position at just 12%.
She's the current favourite according to the bookies too, Betfair have her in top position to become the next leader with odds of 11/10, meanwhile Lizz Truss has also now overtaken Sunak with odds of 5/2 while Sunak's chances drop to 7/2.
Mordaunt has been described as a "dark horse" of the leadership race, managing to become a favourite despite not being as well-known as some of the other candidates.
As she continues with her bid for leadership during tonight's debate, here's everything you need to know about Penny Mordaunt.
Who is Penny Mordaunt?
Penny Mordaunt is the MP for Portsmouth North and has been since 2010.
The 49-year-old became the UK's first female defence secretary in 2019 but was fired just three months later by Boris Johnson when he became Prime Minister.
Mordant was born in Torquay and went to a Catholic school before studying Philosophy at the University of Reading.
She was previously married to Paul Murray, the pair met as mature students while studying in Reading but divorced in 2000.
Mordaunt is also a Royal Naval Reservist and in 2014 she appeared on the ITV reality show Splash.
Now, she is the Minister of State for Trade Policy and has held this role since September last year.
The launch of her leadership bid last week was subject to controversy when her campaign video contained footage of convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius which was hastily edited out.
Penny Mordaunt's political stances and policies
Penny Mordaunt voted for Brexit and played a prominent role in the Vote Leave campaign in 2016.
But she sparked controversy a month before the Brexit referendum when she misleadingly claimed that the UK would have no say in whether Turkey could join the EU.
In a recent interview with LBC's Iain Dale, Mordaunt was questioned about the false claims and confirmed: “I actually stand by that".
It's not just her stance on Brexit that was controversial, she's recently whipped up more controversy when it comes to trans rights.
Mordaunt was expected to be a champion of LGBTQ rights during her leadership bid and had previously publicly supported the trans community. While serving as equalities minister in 2018 she said in the Commons: "trans women are women and trans men are men".
But as speculation mounted that she would launch a leadership bid, Mordaunt appeared to change her stance as she took to Twitter to answer the question "Do I know what a woman is?".
She wrote: "I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman.
"Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me."
She continued to cause controversy on the issue when she made a bizarre anti-trans jibe at her campaign launch.
Addressing party activists and journalists about her stance on the "war on woke", she said: "Let me deal with the issue that is floating in the background there.
“I think it was Margaret Thatcher that said that every prime minister needs a willy. A woman like me doesn’t have one.”
Later, she was asked to define what a women is and answered: “I am biologically a woman, and I can tell you Chris that if you have been in the Royal Navy and you have competed physically against men, you understand the biological difference between men and women.”
Her comments have disappointed the LGBTQ community and come after her own twin brother, who is gay, condemned the Conservative party's stance on LGBTQ rights back in February.
The 48-year-old took to Twitter to say that the Tories were "pushing LGBTQI+ rights backwards at an alarming rate" and added: “If you are a member of the Conservative Party, a Conservative MP, part of this homophobic, transphobic government, you are complicit.”
Some of Mordaunt's key policies as part of her leadership bid so far include pledging a 50% cut in VAT on fuel and also promising to honour the UK's NATO commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2030.
But despite her being a frontrunner in the leadership race, there's still a lot of policies that she's not been clear on yet and there's particularly little detail known about her stance on cutting public services.
