Tory party leader hopefuls revealed as nominations close
By ITV News Producer Hannah Ward-Glenton
Nominations have closed for the Conservative Party leadership race, leaving six candidates to battle it out to win over the party and be elected for the top job.
Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick have all put themselves forward for the role.
Suella Braverman said she had gathered enough support to be a contender, but bowed out of the contest after saying on Sunday she had been "branded mad, bad and dangerous" by her own party.
Rishi Sunak will officially step down from the position on November 2, when the new Conservative Party leader will be announced.
So who could be the next Tory leader?
After Rishi Sunak oversaw a monumental defeat for the Tories in the General Election, six candidates are vying to replace him. Each candidate had to be nominated by at least 10 Tory MPs before Monday's deadline in order to be in the running.
Kemi Badenoch
Considered the bookmakers' favourite, Kemi Badenoch has blamed the Tories' disastrous General Election results on an "incoherent" set of policies.
The shadow housing secretary accused successive Conservative prime ministers of becoming "increasingly liberal" and tolerating "nasty identity politics".
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 the threat posed by Reform UK’s increasing popularity.
Priti Patel
Priti Patel is a long-standing Eurosceptic who was a leading figure in the Vote Leave campaign.
She became an MP in 2010 and as home secretary introduced a points-based immigration system, signed an agreement with Rwanda to send asylum seekers to the country and ratified returns deals with Albania and Serbia.
Patel 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” when she launched her leadership bid over the weekend.
She was awarded a DBE last year as part of Boris Johnson's resignation honours list.
Mel Stride
Mel Stride was one of Rishi Sunak’s closest allies and his frequent media appearances made him a key face of the Tory campaign in the run-up to the General Election washout.
The MP for Central Devon and shadow work and pensions secretary 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.”
Tom Tugendhat
The MP for Tonbridge indicated he would be prepared to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if that was what was needed 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.
Tugendhat unsuccessfully ran to lead the party in 2022, when he pitched himself as the candidate untarnished by the scandals that dogged Boris Johnson and his government.
James Cleverly
James Cleverly was the first contender to announce his ambition to succeed Rishi Sunak.
He and Tom Tugendhat look set to battle it out to become the main centrist candidates for the leadership job.
Cleverly said he could “unite the Conservative Party and overturn (Sir Keir) Starmer’s loveless landslide”.
In a social media video, the Conservative MP for Braintree 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.
Robert Jenrick
Former immigration minister Robert Jenrick is seen as the most likely contender to Kemi Badenoch from the right of the party.
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”.
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How does the process work?
The rules about the leadership process are decided by the 1922 Committee, who are a group of backbench Conservative MPs.
Chairman of the 1922 Committee Bob Blackman urged those involved in the process to be "respectful", after a period of significant division within the party.
He introduced a “yellow card” system to issue warnings to campaigns if they cross the line in attacks on rival candidates.
Explaining the system, 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.
“There’s a difference between vigorous debate and then attacking other individuals just because they happen to dislike what they are proposing.”
Mr Blackman said the decision to have a longer timetable to choose the leaders would help candidates to "engage in proper debates and not personal attacks".
Each contender has a month to campaign, before a number of rounds of voting by Conservative MPs in early September narrows it down further to four candidates.
Tory MPs then vote to choose the two final candidates at the Conservative Party Conference in October, with the final decision made via an online ballot which closes on October 31.
The winner will be crowned on November 2.
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