RISHI Sunak will lose the Tory leadership race and Liz Truss will be the next Prime Minister, Ruth Davidson has said.

Despite being one of his prominent supporters, the former Scottish Tory leader told an audience on the Edinburgh Fringe that Mr Sunak's run for Number 10 was doomed.

She said: “I think the decision has already been made within the party. I think he will lose.”

The blunt assessment chimes with a series of polls showing Ms Truss, the Foreign Secretary, is the overwhelming favourite to succeed Boris Johnson next month.

Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links made the comment at Ayesha Hazarika’s show State of the Nation at Gilded Balloon Teviot.

She also accused Tory colleagues at Westminster of being “cowardly” for not condemning Mr Johnson over the partygate scandal, which she called a “complete and utter s***show”.

The former Edinburgh Central MSP revealed last week that she would vote for the former Chancellor over Ms Truss on the grounds of economic competence. 

However she had done so more in hope than expectation.

She said: “I’ve already voted. I voted for Rishi.

"I voted for him just because I think that the biggest challenges that the country is going to face over the next couple of years are going to be economic ones and I want the smartest person that I can find who knows most about the economy to deal with them.

“I think the decision has already been made within the party. I think he will lose.”

Baroness Davidson also spoke about feeling “really lonely” for speaking out against the Prime Minister during Partygate when so many Tories held their tongue.

“I felt really lonely, actually, being this Tory voice… being one of the few Tories on the telly saying this is completely unacceptable. 

“You cannot have the leader of the country telling everybody that they can’t do these things and then going off and doing them behind the scenes.

“It’s a complete and utter s***show from start to finish - completely unacceptable.  

“So many of my colleagues were cowardly for not speaking out earlier.”