Rishi, Penny, Kemi or Jeremy: Meet the Tory leadership runners and riders fighting to replace Boris Johnson
The Tory leadership race gained momentum over the weekend, with opening gambits coming thick and fast from candidates across almost every wing of the party.
Rishi Sunak, who wasted no time on Friday in publicly stating an intention to stand, remains an early favourite.
But a host of hopefuls, including Nadhim Zahawi, Grant Shapps and Suella Braverman have announced tax-slashing pledges in an apparent bid to contrast themselves with his record as Chancellor.
And in a surprise statement on Saturday, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace – widely tipped as the likely front-runner – said he had decided not to stand after “careful consideration”.
His absence has made way for fresh bids from elsewhere in the party over the weekend, with 11 Tories now in the running for the top job. Here are the contenders for the post.
Rishi Sunak
In a slick campaign video launched on Friday, Sunak announced his leadership bid with the message: “Let’s restore trust, rebuild the economy and reunite the country.”
One of the main front-runners, attracting odds of 4/1 with several bookmakers, the former chancellor’s rise from relative obscurity to household name came as he turned on the spending taps to protect jobs through the furlough scheme when the coronavirus pandemic struck.
Sunak’s calm and measured delivery during televised Covid briefings, and his viral declaration of love for a popular soft drink, will have endeared him to those perhaps not always plugged in to the political goings-on, as well as his resignation on matters of principle on Tuesday.
However his stock has taken a tumble recently following disclosures that his wife had non-dom status for tax purposes and he held on to his US green card while serving in Government.
Supporters will hope his latest £21 billion support package will finally put to bed criticism about the response to the cost of living crisis.
Penny Mordaunt
Mordaunt’s campaign got off to an awkward start on Sunday with her launch video hastily edited to remove several identifiable figures including athlete Jonnie Peacock.
The Paralympian requested footage of him featured in the clip be removed, with Mordaunt, who remains among the early favourites, posting an amended version hours later.
Announcing her bid, the international trade minister said the UK’s leadership “needs to become a little less about the leader and a lot more about the ship”.
Mordaunt was Wallace’s predecessor as defence secretary, and the first woman to hold the post before being sacked by Johnson shortly after he became Prime Minister in 2019.
The trade minister has many strings to her bow as a Royal Navy reservist and former reality TV contestant, having appeared on the Tom Daley-fronted diving show Splash.
She played a prominent role in the Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and enjoys the backing of Dame Andrea Leadsom and Michael Fabricant.
Liz Truss
The Foreign Secretary kept her powder dry as the Tory top brass turned on the mortally wounded Prime Minister, despite being a Johnson loyalist, though she did cut short a foreign trip to Indonesia to head back to Westminster as he announced his resignation.
But she confirmed long-standing expectations that she would throw her hat into the already crowded ring on Sunday, pledging to reverse the national insurance hike.
Writing in The Telegraph, Ms Truss, who has been cultivating support among Tory MPs and enjoys the backing of Julian Knight, Jackie-Doyle Price and Chloe Smith, said she could be “trusted to deliver”.
Social media aficionado Truss has made little secret of her leadership ambitions, with a series of high-profile interventions and photo opportunities in which she appeared to be channelling late PM Margaret Thatcher.
She has the experience of working across many Whitehall departments, while her hard line on Ukraine, insisting Russian forces must be driven from the country, and threats to tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol with the EU play well with sections of the party.
Sajid Javid
Javid formally declared his bid in The Sunday Telegraph after his and Sunak’s double-resignation effectively kickstarted the slew of departures from government, hastening Johnson’s demise.
State school-educated Javid, known as “The Saj” in some circles, is the son of a bus driver who arrived in England from Pakistan in the 1960s, and held ministerial roles in housing, business and culture before becoming chancellor, and then health secretary in the middle of the pandemic.
Javid, who supported Remain in 2016, made it to the final four in the contest to replace Theresa May as Tory leader in 2019, but dropped out and subsequently endorsed Johnson.
He has said he would not only scrap the former chancellor’s plans to raise corporation tax from 19% to 25% in April, but reduce the rate to 15%.
The Bromsgrove MP also pledged to scrap the Government’s controversial national insurance hike, bring forward the planned 1p income tax cut to next year, and introduce a further “significant” temporary reduction on fuel duty.
Grant Shapps
The Transport Secretary, a Johnson loyalist, set up his stall in The Sunday Times by vowing to end “tactical government by an often-distracted centre”.
Without personally criticising the Prime Minister, he suggested his own leadership would bring a return to a more traditionally Conservative approach to state, pledging to curb taxes.
With his local grammar school education and rock-star relative who played guitar for The Clash, Shapps has a slightly different background to some of his Tory contemporaries.
The 53-year-old, who has three children and is Welwyn Hatfield MP, said tackling the cost-of-living crisis and strengthening the economy to become the biggest in Europe are top of his agenda.
Nadhim Zahawi
Zahawi’s bid, also announced in The Sunday Times, is rooted in lower taxes and a “great education” for all, promising to “steady the ship” and “stabilise the economy”.
He also appeared to suggest a hard-line stance on so-called culture war issues, claiming he would protect children from what he claimed was “damaging and inappropriate nonsense from radical activists”.
The newly appointed Chancellor argued Britons must be trusted “to do what is best for themselves”, as he warned the country had lost a sense of “boundless optimism and opportunity” that he traced back to Margaret Thatcher’s tenure.
An outside bet among the bookies, the Iraqi-born former education secretary was a successful businessman and came to wider prominence as vaccines minister during the pandemic.
Tom Tugendhat
Not a household name, but among the early contenders.
The multi-lingual chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee became the first to announce his intention to stand for leader should Johnson be turfed out, with his declaration made in January, a position he repeated in Friday’s Daily Telegraph, saying he was putting together a “broad coalition” offering a “clean start”.
His odds shortened almost immediately as a result.
The former soldier wrote in the paper: “I have served before, in the military, and now in Parliament. Now I hope to answer the call once again as prime minister.”
A Remainer in 2016, he has been a trenchant critic of Johnson, a stance that would appear to have cost him any chance of ministerial preferment under the current leadership.
Kemi Badenoch
Former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch threw her hat into the ring with a plan for a smaller state and a government “focused on the essentials”.
The MP for Saffron Walden said she supported lower taxes “to boost growth and productivity, and accompanied by tight spending discipline”.
Writing in The Times, the 42-year-old former banker, who grew up in the UK, US and Nigeria, also hit out at “identity politics” and said Boris Johnson was “a symptom of the problems we face, not the cause of them”.
Ms Badenoch may be considered an outsider for the leadership given the Tory grandees already in the running, but her profile was boosted by an endorsement from Michael Gove on Sunday.
As chairman of the Commons Health Committee, he has used his position to make a number of critical interventions on the Government’s handling of the pandemic, although his strong support for lockdown measures will not have pleased all Tory MPs.
Suella Braverman
The Attorney General launched an unlikely leadership bid as support for Johnson crumbled around him on Wednesday night.
But a surprise endorsement from prominent Brexiteer Steve Baker, who had earlier said he was considering running, has lent weight to her standing.
Ms Braverman, who was first elected as an MP in 2015, is regarded as something of an outlier for the top job.
A Suella Braverman for PM Twitter account has nonetheless sprung up, with Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne being the first to tweet his support for her bid.
Jeremy Hunt
Hunt confirmed his widely anticipated leadership bid in The Sunday Telegraph, making similar tax-cutting pledges to fellow ex-health secretary Javid.
The foreign secretary, whose Remainer background may have been part of what ruled him out of the running in 2019, has been a persistent critic of Johnson.
Seen by some as a bit of a Thatcher reboot, Hunt might appeal to those who want a sensible choice of leader after months of instability.
Rehman Chishti
The newly appointed Foreign Office minister made an even unlikelier bid for the Tory leadership on Sunday evening in a video posted on Facebook.
Chishti said the right candidate would have “a proven track record of coming to the table with ideas and creativity to help improve people’s lives”.
The MP for Gillingham and Rainham has an unusual political background, having previously stood as a Labour candidate in the 2005 general election before defecting to the Conservatives in 2007.
In 2020 he resigned as Johnson’s special envoy for freedom of religion over the Government’s stance on the Northern Ireland protocol.
The former barrister said at the time clauses in the UK Internal Markets Bill “unilaterally break (the) UK’s legal commitments”.