The big news overnight in the UK is that Boris Johnson has bowed out of the race to become the next UK prime minister. He said that he had cleared “the very high hurdle of 102 nominations” but concluded that running in the race would “simply not be the right thing to do” and that one “can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament”.
This puts Rishi Sunak as favourite to be the next Tory leader and prime minister, after ending yesterday with more than 165 supporters ahead of the 2pm deadline later today. His campaign is expected to gain more momentum now with Johnson’s withdrawal and the pressure now is on Penny Mordaunt, who had only 30 public backers as of last night – 70 nominations short of the noted deadline.