Ex-work and pensions secretary becomes second casualty of contest, leaving four MPs vying to succeed Rishi Sunak
Mel Stride has been knocked out of the race to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative party leader after Robert Jenrick topped the poll of MPs for the second time.
The former work and pensions secretary on Tuesday became the second casualty in the extended leadership contest, which is due to culminate in early November.
Continue reading...Former home secretary got two fewer votes than Mel Stride, while Robert Jenrick leads race to succeed Rishi Sunak
Priti Patel has been knocked out of the race to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative party leader in the first round of voting by Tory MPs.
The former home secretary received 14 votes from her colleagues, leaving her two behind the fifth-placed candidate, Mel Stride.
Continue reading...Badenoch and Jenrick are the bookies’ favourites but the party’s reduced ranks make the numbers extremely tight
When the Conservative MPs who remain return to Westminster, they will briefly seem like some of the most popular people in SW1. With the party so reduced in numbers, over the next few days there will be a furious wooing of those who have not yet declared for one of the six leadership candidates.
“The race is wide open,” one senior Tory said. “There are barely any public endorsements so no one can tell who is the favourite. The public polling has been all over the place. Often they seem to be just based on who has paid for it.”
Continue reading...Tory MPs will vote next week in a series of ballots to narrow the field down to four candidates
Conservative MPs will start whittling down the leadership candidates to four next week, the first stage in a long contest from which a winner will not emerge until 2 November. Here are the six candidates in the running to replace Rishi Sunak.
Continue reading...Veteran Conservatives on the party’s liberal wing have criticised the rightwards shift by some senior figures
Tory grandees have accused senior figures in their own party of using divisive language that inflamed anger over immigration before the recent rioting, amid warnings that too many Conservatives have “turned a blind eye” to a shift to the right.
The criticisms come as fears grow on the party’s liberal wing that the leadership election risks pulling the party further into populist polices designed to take on Reform UK.
Continue reading...Leadership contender says the Conservatives need to recover to ensure Britain does not lurch into ‘negativity and division’
Progressive voters who oppose the Conservatives should still want the party to recover to ensure British politics does not lurch towards populism based on “negativity and division”, a Tory leadership contender has said.
Mel Stride, the former cabinet minister who emerged as a surprise candidate to replace Rishi Sunak, warned that attempting to jump to a “magical ideological square” after the party’s disastrous general election result would fail to solve its problems.
Continue reading...