Tory leadership contest: Who could replace Sunak and oppose Starmer?

The Tory leadership race is in full swing after two rounds of voting led to the eliminations of Dame Priti Patel and Mel Stride.

Now, only four candidates remain in the running to replace Rishi Sunak.

The party, after suffering its worst ever General Election defeat, is torn on whether a shift to the right is the best strategy to regain power, or whether a return to the centre ground would help win back voters.

Because the decision on who should lead them is split between MPs and members, it is very difficult to predict which way the party will go.

So who are the people hoping to become the next leader of the opposition?

What is the process for electing a new leader?

MPs hoping to lead the Tories first had to be nominated from 10 colleagues in order to get their names on the ballot paper. Six MPs succeeded after the conclusion of the contest's first round.

Conservative MPs voted in the first round to whittle the line-up of candidates down, with Priti Patel knocked out of the race, and Robert Jenrick coming out on top.

In the second round, Jenrick again came out on top, with Mel Stride's name removed from the ballot paper.

The remaining four candidates - Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat - will now put forward their leadership pitches at the Tory party conference.

The conference, which starts at the end of September, will act as a large scale hustings event where the candidates will make their case to MPs and members.

MPs will then vote for two finalists on Wednesday, October 9 and Thursday, October 10 before party members elect the winner in the contest's final round.

The next leader of the Conservative Party will be announced on Saturday, November 2.

Robert Jenrick

The current favourite among Tory MPs, Robert Jenrick has gone on a political journey since getting elected in 2014. The MP was nicknamed "Robert Generic" when he first entered Parliament and was considered a moderate.

But he has gradually moved to the right, a position he cemented as immigration minister.

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's campaigning on a tough stance of cutting immigration and pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

James Cleverly

Cleverly has held several senior government roles since being elected the MP for Braintree in 2015, eventually leading two of the Great Offices of State.

He was a prominent face in the Johnson administration and briefly held the role of education secretary in its dying days before being promoted to lead the Foreign Office by Liz Truss.

Cleverly was promoted again to the role of home secretary shortly after Sunak took over, and will be hoping his relative success in reducing immigration will go in his favour.

The shadow home secretary has been taking credit for a small reduction in illegal and legal migration which was confirmed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) after he left office.

Despite his tough stance on immigration, the former army officer is regarded as more centre-right than Patel and says his party should aim to be a "broad church" to win back voters.

The Brexit backer was often trusted by his leaders to defend the Conservatives on the airwaves, and his straight talking attitude has made him popular with party members.

Kemi Badenoch

Another candidate on the right, Badenoch has certainly courted controversy in recent years.

She has held several government roles since being elected the MP for North West Essex in 2017, with her most senior role being Sunak's business secretary.

Her popularity among members surged following a recent scathing attack on Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, but she had been a fan favourite for some time as a culture wars warrior - a tag she disputes.

She made a name for herself as an outspoken voice on gender issues, opposing gender neutral toilets and calling for a change to the Equality Act so that sex is defined only as someone's biological sex.

Badenoch recently took on Doctor Who Actor David Tennant, after he said in a speech at the British LGBTQ+ Awards that Badenoch should "shut up" and he wanted a world where she "doesn't exist anymore".

Ahead of the launch of her leadership campaign, she released a video using the clip of Tennant, in which she said "you need someone like me, who's not afraid of Doctor Who".

The shadow housing secretary has accused successive Conservative prime ministers of allowing Britain to become "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 Reform UK's threat from the right.

At her campaign launch, the MP said her party's mistake was that it "talked right but governed left" as she launched her Tory leadership campaign in Westminster.

Badenoch is considered the favourite to succeed Sunak.

Tom Tugendhat

The shadow security minister has positioned himself as a moderate Conservative who is tough on migration and threats from abroad.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Tonbridge MP indicated he would be prepared to leave the 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 unsuccessfully ran in 2022, when he pitched himself as the candidate untarnished by the scandals that dogged Johnson and his government - but he did accept a role in the Truss administration.

Having first entered Parliament in 2015, Mr Tugendhat chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee for five years and previously served in the military.

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