Conservative party grandees intend to install a new UK prime minister by early September when the House of Commons returns from its summer break, according to MPs with knowledge of the plans.
Boris Johnson’s resignation announcement on Thursday triggered an internal contest for electing a new party leader, who will in turn be appointed prime minister by the Queen. Plans for the race will be signed off at a meeting of the party’s 1922 committee of backbench MPs on Monday.
The contest will be run in two stages. In the first, Conservative MPs will whittle down a longlist of candidates to just two. This will be followed by a campaign among the party’s 100,000 members, who will decide the next leader.
Senior MPs on the 1922 committee’s executive said there is a desire to complete the parliamentary element of the two-stage contest before the Commons breaks for its summer recess on July 21. One senior MP said the party was “confident” the initial stage could be swiftly concluded.
“Logistically I think it should be possible to complete it all by [the] time [the] House comes back in early September,” said one longstanding MP close to the process.
Several candidates have already declared their intention to stand. Suella Braverman, the pro-Brexit attorney-general, was the first to declare. On Thursday, a Twitter account for her campaign was launched bearing the slogan “hope, security and opportunity”.
5/2
are the odds given by Labrokes for Ben Wallace to succeed Boris Johnson
Steve Baker, a former minister and one of the Conservative party’s most effective organisers, said he had been “implored” by fellow MPs to run for the leadership, but stopped short of formally declaring his candidacy.
Both contenders would be vying for endorsement from the European Research Group of Leave-support MPs. “I imagine Steve will eventually back Suella to try and unite the ERG vote,” predicted one influential Tory party figure.
A number of more experienced candidates are expected to declare their intention to stand in the coming days. They include Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and chancellor Nadhim Zahawi. Former chancellor Rishi Sunak and former health secretary Sajid Javid are also contemplating bids, along with defence secretary Ben Wallace.
These current and former cabinet ministers will draw on their experience in government to make their leadership pitches. Zahawi will use his brief time in the Treasury — he was appointed just two days before Johnson announced his intention to resign — to burnish his pro-business, low-tax credentials, while Truss will focus on her role championing the “global Britain” agenda. Wallace would point to his achievements in supporting the Ukrainians in their war with Russia.
Other lesser-known Tories likely to announce bids include foreign affairs select committee chair Tom Tugendhat and trade minister Penny Mordaunt. Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt is also considering whether to stand. All three contenders come from the left of the party.
According to a poll from JL Partners published on Thursday, Sunak would be the best-placed candidate to beat Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in a potential general election. Javid was second, three points behind the opposition leader, while the others are further behind.
Bookmakers Ladbrokes put Wallace as the favourite to succeed Johnson with odds of 5/2, with Sunak at 9/2, Mordaunt at 6/1 and Truss at 8/1.
Several contenders who ran in the 2019 contest after the resignation of former prime minister Theresa May have ruled themselves out of the race — including deputy prime minister Dominic Raab, former business secretary Andrea Leadsom and ex-health secretary Matt Hancock.
Leadership candidates will battle for endorsements from the party’s parliamentary caucuses, including the ERG, the One Nation group of liberal MPs, the China Research Group of China-sceptics and the Northern Research Group representing seats in northern England.
As in 2019, the leadership contest will be run jointly by the 1922 committee and the Conservative party board. The committee will elect a new 18-member executive on Monday, in a vote unrelated to Johnson’s departure, before agreeing on how the contest will be run. One senior Tory said the committee elections would be concluded by 5pm on Monday.
If Sir Graham Brady, current chair of the 1922, is re-elected — there are no other candidates known to be contesting the influential position — he will oversee the parliamentary shortlisting stage.
Those with knowledge of his thinking said that if re-elected Brady would hold an “immediate” meeting of the executive on Monday to agree a timetable for selecting the next prime minister.
It is unknown what threshold will be required for Tory MPs to make it on to the ballot paper. In the 2019 contest, support from 5 per cent of Tory MPs was required to make it into the first round, and this increased to 10 per cent in subsequent rounds. A total of five rounds of MPs’ ballots were held for 10 candidates.
Senior party figures with experience of past contests predicted there would be “an alarmingly big field of runners and riders”, with one MP suggesting that such a large race could prove “very unpredictable”.
Another veteran Tory said that such a large number of candidates could “winnow out quite quickly”, adding that MPs may only have to vote in two or three rounds before the final two are selected.
One cabinet minister predicted that the two shortlisted contenders might be “one person inside the government and one person outside”, adding that Truss and Zahawi may end up facing either Javid or Sunak.
MPs are acutely aware of their responsibilities in choosing a shortlist of just two. One said: “the grassroots are well to the right of the parliamentary party. We’ve got to make sure we don’t end up giving them a shortlist that could produce someone unsuitable to be PM.”
The 1922 committee is likely to propose that the grassroots stage of the contest take place through July and August. The timing will be agreed at a meeting of the party’s board once it has been elected on Monday.
Several televised and regional hustings are expected to be held around the country as party activists make the final decision on who will replace Johnson as the next UK prime minister.