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The race to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader in the wake of the Conservative Party’s wipeout at the general election has been underway for 10 days.
Ex-deputy foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell has urged the Tory party to avoid an interim leader, saying the best option “is to seek to persuade Rishi to remain” until mid to end of November.
He said that the former prime minister’s instinct will be ‘almost certainly to go’ but that the 1922 Committee meeting showed ‘widespread feelings of sympathy and respect for Rishi Sunak.’
While no candidate has yet formally launched a bid, Suella Braverman’s hopes were dealt an early blow, as one source described the twice-sacked home secretary’s campaign to The Times as “dead before it even started”, accusing her of “going too hard, too soon”.
Other possible Tory leadership race contenders on the party’s right include Kemi Badenoch and Priti Patel, while James Cleverly, Jeremy Hunt, Tom Tugendhat and Victoria Atkins are among more moderate figures who could launch bids.
Tory treasurer who gave party £5m quits role days after election defeat
Sir Mohamed Mansour, the senior treasurer of the Conservative Party, announced on Saturday he was resigning from his post 10 days after Rishi Sunak’s election defeat.
The Egyptian-born billionaire had donated £5m to the party and had been a key player in raising other funds. His donation was the biggest for the Conservatives since 2001.
He told The Independent: “I have been honoured to serve my country and party since December 2022 and it has been a privilege to do so.”
Who will be the next Tory leader? All the front runners ranked, from Priti Patel to Suella Braverman
Here we look at some of the remaining runners and riders:
Top Tory calls for Rishi Sunak to stay as party leader until November as succession battle looms
Tory grandee urges against lurch to extreme right in leadership battle
The Conservative Party needs to avoid a lurch to the “extreme right” as it tries to rebuild itself from its worst ever defeat, a former party chairman has warned.
Lord Chris Patten, who was chairman for the successful 1992 general election campaign where he also lost his seat, has raised concerns that the Tories will try to ape Nigel Farage as it seeks to win back supporters.
Writing for The Independent, the Tory grandee, who was also Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, labelled two of the potential contenders Priti Patel and Suella Braverman as “extreme right” and described Farage as “Tommy Robinson in a cravat” as he urged for the party to take time over resetting itself.
Rishi Sunak should stay as Tory leader until November, Andrew Mitchell says
A senior Tory has urged Rishi Sunak to stay on as party leader until November amid divisions in the party over how long the contest to replace him should take.
Shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell said he understood Mr Sunak’s “possible reticence” but spoke out against the idea of having an interim leader and argued “we should play it long”.
He said the Conservatives should “adopt a modest profile” in the wake of its drubbing in the General Election and use the party conference, starting on September 29, for a “showcasing” of contenders.
Watch: Suella Braverman refuses to say if she’ll be next Tory leader
Suella Braverman blasts Kemi Badenoch as Tories ignore calls for unity
Two of the frontrunners in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader have attacked each other, as infighting within the party deepens.
She also named her rival Kemi Badenoch, tweeting: “I’d be interested in knowing whether Kemi thinks I’m having a ‘very public nervous breakdown’.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg starts filming new reality TV show following general election defeat
The real reason Rishi Sunak held his disastrous snap election
Households would have to pay even more eye-watering sums in many of the so-called “blue wall” Conservative seats in the south of England Mr Sunak was desperate to save.
Will Rishi Sunak stick around to take on Keir Starmer at PMQs?
One of the many humiliations suffered by the Conservatives in the past week has been the temporary deletion of their X/Twitter account. For a short time, visitors to the party’s social media page were greeted only with the error message: “Something went wrong”. That’s an understatement, although the question remains exactly what went wrong.
Identifying a way forward could take months, if not years, but in the meantime what’s left of the parliamentary Conservative party has to form an effective opposition. In the short term, this means Rishi Sunak taking on Keir Starmer’s former role in the most brutal of job swaps…
Sean O’Grady has more…
