UK: Rishi Sunak leads first round of voting to replace Boris Johnson

Conservative lawmakers in the British Parliament cast their first-round votes on Wednesday to pick a possible candidate to replace outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson as head of the party and thus the country's leader.

Former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak leads five other candidates who made it passed the first round of voting.

Finance Minister Nadhim Zahawi and former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt were eliminated from the race after they failed to reach the threshold of 30 votes in the secret ballot.

Each round will knock out the candidates with the least support until only two are left, at which point grassroots party members will pick the final winner. In practice, some lawmakers often retract their candidacy, speeding up the process.

The first vote comes after Johnson's final session of Prime Minister's Questions, in which the government refused to allow debate time for a no-confidence motion tabled by the opposition Labour party — a move some have criticized as unconstitutional.