Kemi Badenoch has become the sixth declared Tory leader contender pledging to ‘renew capitalism’.
The former Cabinet minister – widely regarded as the favourite to replace Rishi Sunak – has joined Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride in going public with a bid.
The final line-up is due to be confirmed when nominations close this afternoon, firing the starting gun on a contest that will culminate in November.
However, Suella Braverman has announced that she will not be running for the party’s top job, admitting not enough MPs agree with her call for a shift to the Right.
Tensions are also already rising, with Ms Badenoch accusing other camps of ‘dirty tricks’ to try and derail her pitch.
Kemi Badenoch said capitalism has become a ‘dirty word’ in recent years and reclaiming it is crucial if the Tories are to bounce back
Ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick (left) and former work and pensions secretary Mel Stride (right) are also bidding for the Tory crown
Priti Patel, the former home secretary, has entered the leadership contest
James Cleverly (left) and ex-security minister Tom Tugendhat (right) have already joined the contest
Writing in the Times, Ms Badenoch said capitalism had become a ‘dirty word’ in recent years and the Tories must reclaim it.
She said the party needed to ‘start from first principles’ and pledged to start speaking ‘the truth again’ on everything from controlling immigration to reforming public services.
‘If I have the privilege to serve, we will speak the truth again,’ she wrote.
‘That is why today my campaign is launching with an explicit focus on renewing our party for 2030 – the first full year we can be back in Government and the first year of a new decade.
‘We will renew by starting from first principles: we can’t control immigration until we re-confirm our belief in the nation state and the sovereign duty it has, above all else, to serve its own citizens.
‘Our public services will never fully recover from the pandemic until we remember that government should do some things well, not everything badly.
‘At the foundation of our renewal, and indeed the reassembly of the conservative family, is a confident set of principles about how our economy should work, and for whom it should work.
‘The wealth of our nation is built upon our historic ability to capture the ingenuity and industry of our people, and the willingness of many to trade risk for reward.
‘It’s become a dirty word, but our renewal must also mean a renewal for capitalism.’
However, her campaign is expected to be rocked by claims of ‘bullying’ behaviour by her and alleged impropriety committed by one of her aides.
The Guardian is said to have conducted the potentially damning investigation, expected to be published in the coming weeks.
Ms Badenoch’s team say the Guardian investigation is the product of a disgruntled former special adviser she dismissed.
Her team has also claimed that dirty tricks are at play in the leadership contest after a ‘dirty dossier’ of online comments she made nearly 20 years ago was published.
Ms Badenoch has said it was ‘both amusing/alarming the extraordinary lengths people will go to to play dirty tricks’ and said the public were put off politics by ‘petty’ and ‘puerile’ methods.
Dame Priti has promised to put ‘unity before personal vendetta’.
Standing on a platform of ‘unite to win’, she urged colleagues not to descend into ‘a soap opera of finger-pointing and self-indulgence’ in the wake of the landslide General Election defeat.
Some MPs expect Mr Tugendhat to top the ballot of MPs in the Autumn, with the surviving rump of the parliamentary party dominated by the One Nation group. But the conventional view is that the membership is further to the right.
Former home secretary Suella Braverman had been tipped to run, but last night dramatically withdrew. There had been rumours Ms Braverman was struggling to secure the 10 nominations needed by 2.30pm, although she insisted she had the numbers.
‘Although I’m grateful to the 10 MPs who wanted to nominate me for the leadership, getting on to the ballot is not enough,’ she wrote in the Telegraph.
‘There is, for good or for ill, no point in someone like me running to lead the Tory Party when most of the MPs disagree with my diagnosis and prescription,’ she said.
She said the party’s disastrous election result was down to failures on migration, taxes and ‘transgender ideology’.
She added: ‘I’ve been branded mad, bad and dangerous enough to see that the Tory Party does not want to hear this. And so I will bow out here.’
All contenders need a proposer, seconder and eight other backers to stand.
After the summer recess MPs will narrow the field down to four who will make their case at the Tories’ annual party conference from September 29 to October 2.
The final two will be put to a vote of party members in an online ballot that will close on October 31, with the result on November 2.
The timelines mean that Mr Sunak is likely to find himself responding to Labour’s first Budget – a prospect that has raised alarm after he was accused of ‘phonining it in’ at Keir Starmer’s maiden PMQs.
