Six Tory MPs are officially in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as party leader, it was confirmed today.
Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride will battle it out over the coming weeks for the Conservative leadership.
In a bid to avoid another divisive contest and ‘constant backbiting’, party officials warned the competing rivals they will be handed a ‘yellow card’ if they are deemed to be too aggressive.
Ms Badenoch is currently the bookies’ favourite to emerge victorious from the contest, which will conclude in early November.
The ex-business secretary’s status as the frontrunner has made her a target for rival campaigns, and she has already hit out over the circulation of a ‘dirty dossier’ about her.
The final line-up of contenders was confirmed this afternoon after Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, earlier announced she would not be running.
She admitted not enough of her fellow Tory MPs agree with her call for a shift to the Right.
Kemi Badenoch is currently the bookies’ favourite to emerge victorious from the Tory leadership contest, which will conclude in early November.
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 officially entered the leadership contest
James Cleverly (left) and ex-security minister Tom Tugendhat (right) are also among the six confirmed candidates
A series of hustings events will be held among Conservative MPs when they return to Westminster after their summer recess in September.
A ballot of MPs will then narrow the field to four candidates, who will be offered the chance to woo party members at the Tory conference in Birmingham between 29 September to 2 October.
Further votes among MPs on 9 and 10 October will slim the four remaining contenders to a final pairing, with party members then being balloted on their favourite candidate up to 31 October.
The final result will be announced on 2 November.
Bob Blackman, chairman of the Tories’ 1922 Committee which is organising the leadership contest, revealed he has introduced a ‘yellow card’ system to issue warnings to campaigns if they cross the line in attacks on rival candidates.
He said: ‘The situation with the yellow card is very simple.
‘The constant backbiting and attacking colleagues both in public and on the media in the last parliament was one of the contributory reasons as to why the party did so badly in the general election.
‘We are determined that we will not tolerate that happening.
‘So if candidates indulge in it, then I will get involved, obviously, to warn them and, if necessary, issue a public statement to the fact that they have been involved in such activity.
‘If MPs get involved in such backbiting then the chief whip will intervene, and if ex-MPs get involved then the party chairman will be involved in making sure that simple action is taken.’
Mr Blackman added that a public statement about bad behaviour would be ‘extremely detrimental’ to a candidate’s chances.
He added: ‘There’s a difference between vigorous debate and then attacking other individuals just because they happen to dislike what they are proposing.’
Bob Blackman, chairman of the 1922 Committee, revealed he has introduced a ‘yellow card’ system to issue warnings to campaigns if they cross the line in attacks on rival candidates
Suella Braverman announced she would not be running as she admitted not enough of her fellow Tory MPs agree with her call for a shift to the Right
Ms Badenoch was the final candidate to formally confirm their Tory leadership bid as she vowed to ‘renew’ the party.
Writing in the Times, the shadow housing secretary 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, Ms Badenoch’s 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.
Ms Braverman had been tipped to run, but last night dramatically withdrew.
There had been rumours she was struggling to secure the 10 nominations needed by 2.30pm today, 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 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 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 needed 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 ‘phoning it in’ at Sir Keir Starmer’s maiden PMQs.
Who are the six contenders hoping to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader?
Kemi Badenoch – 7/4 with Ladbrokes
The bookmakers’ favourite said an ‘incoherent’ set of policies were to blame for the Tories suffering their worst general election result.
The shadow housing secretary used a Times article to launch her leadership bid, accusing successive Conservative prime ministers of allowing Britain to become ‘increasingly liberal’ and tolerating ‘nasty identity politics’.
She became an MP in 2017 and as minister for women and equalities, made a name for herself as an outspoken voice on gender issues, including by calling for a change to the Equality Act so that sex is defined only as someone’s biological sex.
She said ‘renewal’ was the first task for a new party leader and that she would aim to rebuild the party by 2030 and respond to Reform UK’s threat from the right.
The former business and trade secretary made a leadership attempt in 2022 after Boris Johnson’s resignation, coming fourth.
The North West Essex MP was born in Wimbledon, south-west London, but grew up in Nigeria and the US, returning to the UK at the age of 16. She has a Masters in engineering as well as being a Bachelor of Laws, and has worked at private bank Coutts and The Spectator.
Ladbrokes has her as 7-4 favourite, while William Hill also makes her the favourite at 15-8.
Robert Jenrick – 5/2
The former immigration minister is seen as the most likely contender to Ms Badenoch from the right of the party.
He has successfully seen off his former Home Office boss Suella Braverman, who abandoned her own hopes of the leadership, and is expected to campaign on a tough stance of cutting immigration and pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Nicknamed ‘Robert Generic’ when first elected to the Commons in 2014, he has gradually moved to the right.
The MP for Newark resigned as a minister last December, claiming the then-draft legislation designed to revive the Rwanda deportation policy did ‘not go far enough’.
He is 5-2 with Ladbrokes, 11-4 with William Hill.
Tom Tugendhat – 5/1
The shadow security minister looks set to fight it out with James Cleverly to become the main centrist candidate.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Tonbridge MP indicated he would be prepared to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if it was necessary to secure the UK’s borders.
He denied the party would be split by the contest, because on key issues including the ECHR, gender, taxes, defence and net zero, all Tories shared the same ‘common sense’ views.
He previously unsuccessfully ran in 2022, when he pitched himself as the candidate untarnished by the scandals that dogged Mr Johnson and his government.
Having first entered Parliament in 2015, Mr Tugendhat chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee for five years and previously served in the military.
His odds are 4-1 with William Hill, 5-1 at Ladbrokes.
James Cleverly – 6/1
The shadow home secretary was the first Tory formally to declare his ambition to succeed Mr Sunak.
He said he could ‘unite the Conservative Party and overturn (Sir Keir) Starmer’s loveless landslide’.
The party needs to expand its base of support and shake off the impression that it is more focused on infighting than serving the public, he argued.
Mr Cleverly, a centrist, took an apparent swipe at the right of his party when he warned against ‘sacrificing pragmatic government in the national interest on the altar of ideological purity’.
In a social media video, he highlighted his credentials as having been both home and foreign secretary, as well as serving as party chairman when the Tories won their landslide in 2019.
Mr Cleverly was first elected as the Conservative MP for Braintree in May 2015.
After an injury cut short his Army career, he got a business degree and joined the Territorial Army. He worked in magazine and digital publishing before setting up his own business. He was a London Assembly member before he became an MP.
Mr Cleverly is at 9-2 with William Hill and 6-1 at Ladbrokes.
Priti Patel – 8/1
Dame Priti is a longstanding Eurosceptic who has said she was inspired to join the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher.
She became an MP in 2010 and served in Cabinet positions under Theresa May and Mr Johnson, as international development secretary and home secretary respectively.
Dame Priti was a leading figure in the Vote Leave campaign, and as home secretary launched a points-based immigration system, signed the agreement with Rwanda to send asylum seekers to the country, and sealed returns deals with Albania and Serbia.
She resigned as home secretary after Liz Truss became Tory leader.
She said she could deliver the ‘experienced and strong’ leadership needed to unite the Tories’ disparate factions.
Launching her leadership bid with a Telegraph column, she said she would use the ‘huge talent pool … of Conservative Party members’ to ‘solve the big challenges that Labour, the Lib Dems and Reform don’t have answers to’.
Dame Priti’s odds with both William Hill and Ladbrokes are 8-1.
Mel Stride – 28/1
Shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride is one of Mr Sunak’s closest allies and his frequent media appearances made him the face of the Tory campaign in the run-up to the election disaster.
The MP for Central Devon, said he believed he was the right person to ‘unite the party’.
He said: ‘We’ve substantially lost the trust of the British people and we’ve lost our reputation for competence, and I believe that I’m in a very good position to address those issues going forward.’
But the bookmakers, at least, do not agree: Mr Stride is available at 20-1 from William Hill and 28-1 at Ladbrokes.
