The race is now wide open for Sunak, the former chancellor, who has more than 140 Tory MPs backing him. Mordaunt lags behind with the public support of 26.

Johnson said he had “reached out” to leadership rivals Sunak and Mordaunt to see if they could work together in the national interest, but it had not proved possible.

In a statement, Boris insisted 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 added:

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.

While Sunak is now the clear favourite, a source from Mordaunt’s campaign told The Telegraph that she was “still running” for the post.

Sunak said he would always be “grateful” to Johnson over Brexit, the vaccine rollout and the response to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Mary Elizabeth “Liz” Truss took over from Johnson barely a month ago but failed to curb the country’s cost-of-living crisis, industrial unrest and recession.

The deteriorating state of affairs forced her to resign after just 44 days in office making her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history.

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