In recent days, Tory party members tasked with choosing their next leader and, by default, prime minister, have received their ballot papers. As the final results of the vote loom closer, we look at the lives of the two contenders and the experiences that shaped them. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor, both took the same course at Oxford University and both have clocked up at least a decade in the private sector: Truss in the oil industry and telecoms, and Sunak in hedge funds. But the timeline throws up some contrasting credentials in the years Truss was addressing the Lib Dem conference, and Sunak was already penning anti-EU essays. Later, while Truss’s rise through the ministerial ranks under three different prime ministers was steady; his was fast as Johnson chose to promote him to chancellor with only two years’ ministerial experience.