There is a reason why the House of Cards was invented in Britain. The way politics is done here, with games, and backstabbing does not promise a clean fight for the new Prime Minister.

American politics is all in your face. The British one is far more subtle with the skeletons kept locked in the closet until they need to be exposed and perfectly styled political optics that mask the skullduggery.

After Tom Tugendhat was eliminated from the leadership race on Monday, everyone in Westminster wants to know where did the 14 new votes for Liz Truss come from? One thing insiders know, they did not come from former Tugendhat supporters.

One scenario Westminster insiders were throwing around today after Kemi Badenoch was eliminated and Liz gained 14 votes is that team Rishi ‘lent’ votes to Liz to eliminate Kemi.

Damian Green who was campaign manager of the Tugendhat campaign said that Tom’s votes did not go to Liz. He had 31 votes up for grabs.

“Something is going on” people were commenting.

An MP told The Pavlovic Today that many MPs supporting different candidates believe that the vote was “rigged” to prop up Liz Truss.

It is widely believed that the front runner in the leadership race with Conservative MPs, Rishi Sunak, would rather face Liz Truss in the finals than Penny Mordaunt.

“Rishi knows that in order to win this, he will need to blow Liz up,” an MP said. “Wait and see what happens if she gets into the final two.”

Penny supporters will choose Rishi over Truss but they say that “the thing is that in the finals we will have the two least popular candidates among the party membership.”

There is a consensus that Rishi or Truss will lose the GE in two years and believe that only Penny could keep the Conservatives governing and deliver majority.

That Liz Truss picked up the 14 votes came as a surprise to a source who told The Pavlovic Today that his two campaign members were not happy after the first round of elimination as Liz Truss campaign was “plummeting.”

The vote today will decide the final two runners for the next Prime Minister. If Liz Truss becomes the next Prime Minister then the establishment will win again.

“No change, no chance” quipped one Conservative MP. 

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Ksenija Pavlovic McAteer

Ksenija Pavlovic is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Pavlovic Today, The Chief White House Correspondent. Pavlovic was a Teaching Fellow and Doctoral Fellow in the Political Science department...

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