Tory councillors put Sunak and ex-boss neck and neck

BORIS JOHNSON and Rishi Sunak are neck and neck in terms of who Tory councillors want to become the next prime minister, a poll reveals.

The survey shows in a straight choice between the pair, 48 per cent prefer the former chancellor and 45 per cent the former prime minister.

It also reveals that grassroots members of the party regret the choice of Liz Truss to lead the country, with almost half who voted for her saying she was right to quit.

The poll of 241 councillors, carried out by Savanta ComRes for The Sunday Telegraph, suggests that if the race goes to the membership it could be close.

Local elected representatives are typically less supportive of Mr Johnson than the wider membership, meaning he is still likely to hold an overall lead.

The former prime minister is widely thought to be the more popular of the two leading candidates with the grassroots, though he is less well-supported among MPs.

In contrast, Mr Sunak has a trickier relationship with the party faithful as a result of his role in the rebellion that saw Mr Johnson ousted from Downing

‘If this contest goes down to members, it’s imperative Sunak retains those who voted for him in August’

Street in July. During the leadership contest to replace him in the summer, some members of the party accused him of stabbing his former boss in the back.

But he still performed better than expected in the final battle against Ms Truss, securing 42.6 per cent of the vote in the members’ ballot.

Chris Hopkins, director at Savanta ComRes, said the poll showed there was “barely a cigarette paper between Sunak and Johnson” among Tory councillors.

“Sunak is, possibly, a nose ahead, able to retain more of his vote [from] among councillors a few months ago, than Johnson takes directly from Truss,” he said.

“If this contest does go down to the members, it’s imperative that Sunak retains almost all of those who voted for him back in August.”

He will also have to “pick up enough of those who voted for Truss that express some buyer’s remorse and find the prospect of a second Johnson regime unpalatable”.

Mr Hopkins cautioned that the rest of the 170,000-strong membership were “more likely to vote for Johnson than the councillors in this poll”. He added:

“Savanta ComRes polls of Conservative councillors in the 2019 contest, and the contest in August, were less favourable to Johnson and Truss respectively than the final overall members results were.

“Thus, Sunak’s most narrow of leads here doesn’t give me much confidence that he’d be ahead at all among the wider membership.”

A poll of Tory members just before Ms Truss resigned showed Mr Johnson was the favourite amongst the grassroots to replace her. In the YouGov survey on Tuesday, 32 per cent picked Mr Johnson as their top choice, compared to 23 per cent for Mr Sunak.

‘Sunak’s most narrow of leads doesn’t give me much confidence he’d be ahead among the wider membership’