Former finance minister Rishi Sunak and foreign secretary Liz Truss have emerged as the two final contenders for the post of the UK’s Prime Minister to replace Boris Johnson, after having secured the highest number of votes from Conservative Party MPs.

Grateful that my colleagues have put their trust in me today.

I will work night and day to deliver our message around the country.

Join the team at https://t.co/3cXn1rFhca pic.twitter.com/ro612xDAcL

— Ready For Rishi (@RishiSunak) July 20, 2022

“Grateful that my colleagues have put their trust in me today. I will work night and day to deliver our message around the country,” Sunak, who is of Indian origin, posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

Truss also took to social media to thank her supporters saying she is “ready to hit the ground running from day one”.

Sunak, 42, has led in all rounds of the voting among Conservative MPs but it is Truss who seems to have gained the advantage so far among the 200,000 members of the governing party who will ultimately choose the winner. The final counting of votes will take place on September 5.

The former finance minister who was the first to quit Johnson’s Cabinet triggering an avalanche of resignations will be taking on Truss who had stuck steadfastly with Johnson to the very end.

Eleven candidates originally put their names forward but in a fifth and final ballot of Conservative MPs on Wednesday, the junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt was eliminated. Sunak won 137 votes, versus Truss’s 113 and Mordaunt’s 105.

Sunak, who had come in for criticism for what some called elitist leanings, had set the balance right during the contest for MPs’ votes. He highlighted the story of his Indian family that emigrated from east Africa in the 1960s.

"My mum studied hard to get the qualifications to become a pharmacist. She met my dad, an NHS [National Health Service] GP, and they settled in Southampton. Their story didn't end there, but that is where my story began," he said.

Similarly, he answered critics of his wife’s family wealth by pointing out that his parents-in-law – Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty  had strived hard to create a global company from scratch that now employs thousands of people even in the UK.

During a live TV debate, he said: “My father-in-law came from absolutely nothing, just had a dream and a couple of hundred pounds that my mother-in-law's savings provided him, and with that he went on to build one of the world's largest, most respected, most successful companies that by the way employs thousands of people here in the United Kingdom. It's an incredibly Conservative story, actually it's a story that I'm really proud of and as Prime Minister I want to ensure that we can create more stories like theirs here at home."

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