Tom Tugendhat has become the latest candidate to be kicked out of the Tory leadership race.
The former security minister came last in the third ballot of Conservative MPs.
It leaves Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch fighting it out to make the final run-off, when party members will decide which of the two candidates left will replace Rishi Sunak as leader.
Priti Patel and Mel Stride were the two candidates who dropped out of the contest in earlier rounds of voting.
In the latest ballot, Cleverly came top on 39, Jenrick was second on 31 votes, Badenoch won the support of 30 MPs and Tugendhat was backed by 20.
It comes after Cleverly was widely seen to have been the candidate who performed best at last week’s Tory conference.
The final vote by Tory MPs will take place tomorrow, with senior party figures last week predicting a “fight to the death” between Cleverly and Badenoch for the right to take on Jenrick in the final run-off.
However, it now looks like it will be a battle between Jenrick and Badenoch to see who will go up against Cleverly in the final two.
Supporters of all the remaining candidates will now spend the next 24 hours trying to win the support of those who backed Tugendhat in the latest ballot.
Cleverly’s campaign received a boost on Monday when Stride, a close ally of Rishi Sunak and seen a popular within the party, announced that he was throwing his weight behind his leadership bid.
A poll for the ConservativeHome website also showed that Tory members – who will ultimately decide who wins – believed Cleverly had the best party conference of all the leadership candidates.
