Tom Tugendhat has been knocked out of the Tory leadership race, with James Cleverly coming out on top as the list of candidates is narrowed down.
Cleverly received 39 of the 120 votes, followed by Kemi Badenoch on 30, former front-runner Robert Jenrick on 31, and Tom Tugendhat on 20.
The three remaining candidates – Jenrick, Badenoch and Cleverly – will be whittled down again to two after a further round of voting on Wednesday.
Eliminated Tory leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat thanked his supporters after Tuesday’s ballot.
In a post on X, he wrote: “To everyone who backed our campaign – thank you!
“Your energy, your ideas and your support have shown a vision of what our party could become.”
The contest to replace Rishi Sunak as leader of the party spans across more than three months – it began in late July and will conclude when the final winner is revealed on November 2.
At the Conservative Party Conference last week, the four candidates made their final pitches to MPs.
Earlier this month former Home Secretary Priti Patel became the first candidate to be knocked out of the race, followed by former Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride.
Who are the remaining contenders?
James Cleverly
James 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.
Former leadership contender and ex-Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride came out in support of Cleverly on Tuesday.
The former Home Secretary has come under fire in recent days for accepting free tickets for sporting events and reportedly failing to fully declare them, as reported by the Mirror.
Cleverly 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.
He was promoted again to the role of home secretary shortly after Rishi Sunak took over, and will be hoping his relative success in reducing immigration will go in his favour.
Robert Jenrick
Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has come out on top in both previous rounds of voting, getting 28 votes in the first round and 33 in the second.
He’s marked himself apart from other candidates by saying the UK “must leave” the European Court of Human Rights.
Jenrick faced some criticism at Conservative Party Conference when he released a video claiming UK special forces are “killing rather than capturing terrorists” because the ECHR will “set them free”.
The Newark MP later doubled down on the claim, defending his comments as “absolutely correct” – though he admitted he could not “elaborate on particular cases”.
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”.
Kemi Badenoch
Robert Jenrick wasn’t the only candidate to cause a stir at the Tory conference after controversial comments – Kemi Badenoch faced a fierce backlash after she appeared to claim maternity pay was “excessive”.
She later clarified the remarks saying she believes in maternity pay.
In an interview with Times Radio, the shadow communities secretary had described statutory maternity pay as “a function of tax”.
She said: “Tax comes from people who are working, we’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive.”
Badenoch also drew some criticism after making a joke that some civil servants are so bad they “should be in prison.”
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.
Badenoch 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.
The former business secretary says “renewal” is 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.
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