A SOUTHEND MP who had set out his support for Boris Johnson to be named the next Prime Minister is now backing Rishi Sunak.

Rochford and Southend East MP Sir James Duddridge took to Twitter last night to express his surprise after Mr Johnson pulled himself out of the running claiming he could not “unite the party”.

“Well that was unexpected,” Sir Duddridge tweeted.

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Following that tweet up, he announced his support for former chancellor Rishi Sunak.

“We must unite the parliamentary party and get the economy back on track. Rishi is best placed to do this,” he said.

Last night the former prime minister said he had “reached out” to rivals Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt to see if they could work together in the national interest. However, he said this had not proved possible.

In a statement, he claimed he had secured the 100 nominations needed to get onto the ballot paper and that if he stood there was a “very good chance” he would be back in Downing Street by the end of the week.

He went on: “But in the course of the last days I have sadly come to the conclusion that this would simply not be the right thing to do. You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in Parliament.

“And though I have reached out to both Rishi and Penny – because I hoped that we could come together in the national interest – we have sadly not been able to work out a way of doing this.

“Therefore I am afraid the best thing is that I do not allow my nomination to go forward and commit my support to whoever succeeds.”

Johnson’s withdrawal from the race leaves the election to replace Liz Truss as potentially a straight fight between Sunak, the former chancellor, and Mordaunt, the Leader of the House.