Britain's former Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Rishi Sunak, best known for signing the cheques on the mega-money lockdown policies of the Covid era and pushing the national tax burden to the highest levels in decades, will be the next Prime Minister after the only other serious challenger dropped out at the last minute.

The officers of the 1922 Committee met to scrutinise candidate applications Monday lunchtime, having set the bar to entry unusually high to discourage those the group chairman Sir Graham Brady dismissed as not being "serious" from standing. Finding only one candidate had passed the threshold, Sir Graham declared Rishi Sunak as the winner, electing not to reveal how many backers Sunak got in total.

The handover of power from Liz Truss, who has been the leader of the Conservative Party for just 49 days including today, including both the Tory party leadership and title of Prime Minister, could theoretically all take place this afternoon or tomorrow. Now Sunak has the right to lead the largest party in Parliament, becoming Prime Minister is at this point a mere formality, contracted by Truss visiting the King at Buckingham Palace to tender her resignation, followed by Sunak being invited to form a government by the monarch.