Who's still in the Conservative leadership race?

Four finalists are making their cases to become the next Conservative leader with the job of resurrecting the party's fortunes after a heavy general election defeat. At the annual party conference in Birmingham, where members will hear from the remaining candidates, former prime minister Rishi Sunak urged his party to “learn the lessons” and reflect on its time in power before its general election flop in July. A friendly battle of stalls carrying merchandise is under way, with volunteers touting badges, foam fingers, pens, lanyards and posters touted to passers-by. In addition to dozens of panel appearances, each contender will take to the main stage to get their views across to the membership in attendance. The shadow security minister looks set to fight it out with James Cleverly to become the main centrist candidate. Mr Tugendhat wants to cap immigration at 100,000 and has said he would see “the blood of the economy flowing again” through tax cuts. “We don’t do it because we worship high or low taxes. It’s because we believe in freedom,“ he told the main hall in his audition to the faithful. "The reason we think taxes should be lower is because we think individuals are better when they are freer, when they’re able to make the decisions over their own lives, and when they’re able to put their effort and their energy into the projects, and the ideas that they think will work.” The Tonbridge MP indicated he would be prepared to leave the European Convention on Human Rights if it was necessary to secure the UK’s borders. He denied the party would be split by the contest because on key issues, including the ECHR, gender, tax , net zero and defence , all Tories shared the same “common-sense” views. He ran unsuccessfully in 2022, when he pitched himself as the candidate untarnished by the scandals that had dogged Mr Johnson and his government. Having entered Parliament in 2015, Mr Tugendhat chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee for five years and previously served in the military. The former immigration minister, who has won the most support in the early rounds of voting, is now a favourite to win. He is considered the most likely rival to Kemi Badenoch from the party's right. He is campaigning on introducing a legally binding cap on legal immigration. He also wants to pull out of the ECHR. Mr Jenrick told the Conservative Friends of Israel that he would move Britain’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. “I stood in this very hall a few years ago and I said it then, as I say it now tonight, and if the Foreign Office or the civil servants don’t want to do it, I will build it myself." Nicknamed “Robert Generic” when first elected to the Commons in 2014, he has gradually moved farther to the right. The MP for Newark resigned as a minister in December, claiming the then-draft legislation designed to revive the Rwanda deportation policy did “not go far enough”. Ms Badenoch was topping the news agenda before her appearance on Monday after she questioned if maternity pay needs to be looked at as part of cutting excessive red tape. She later denied wanting to cut the benefit. She said: “Maternity pay varies, depending on who you work for – but statutory maternity pay is a function of tax, 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. The shadow housing secretary said her rivals, in particular Mr Jenrick, were distorting her words. “It shows that he’s not actually reading or listening to what I’m saying,” she said. At another appearance she said maternity leave was badly structured for the national interest. “I think that there are things that we have to do to make sure that we make life comfortable for those people who are … starting families,” she said. “A lot of people have fewer children because they start having children later.” She told the main stage meeting she was offering confident Conservatism. "I’m somebody who gets ‘cut through’," she said. "I’m somebody who communicates our values and I always start from first principles. I can do it and that’s why I want to be Tory leader.” Not afraid to be controversial, Ms Badenoch told a conference meeting of the Conservative Friends of Israel that a group of independent MPs who stood on pro-Palestine tickets are a “new threat”. “We must not pretend that these people are a minority,” she said. "We have to fight this ideology that has no business in our country." She became an MP in 2017 and, as minister for women and equalities, made a name for herself as an outspoken voice on gender issues, including by calling for a change to the Equality Act so that gender is defined only as someone’s biological gender. She said “renewal” was the first task for a new party leader and she aims to rebuild the Tories by 2030 and respond to Reform UK’s threat from the right. The former business and trade secretary made a leadership attempt in 2022 after Boris Johnson’s resignation, coming fourth. The North-west Essex MP was born in Wimbledon, south-west London , but grew up in Nigeria and the US , returning to the UK at the age of 16. She has a master's degree in engineering as well as being a Bachelor of Law, and has worked at private bank Coutts and The Spectator magazine. Shadow home secretary James Cleverly was the first Tory to declare his ambition to succeed Mr Sunak. He believes in supporting Israel against Hamas and while foreign secretary he led British support for Ukraine. He said he could “unite the Conservative Party and overturn [Keir] Starmer’s loveless landslide” election win. The party needs to expand its base of support and shake off the impression that it is more focused on infighting than serving the public, he said. “I have been a team player, which has meant I have had to promote other people’s ideas,” he said. “I have not spent that time promoting my own ideas.” Mr Cleverly, a centrist in Conservative politics, took an apparent swipe at the right wing of his party when he warned against “sacrificing pragmatic government in the national interest on the altar of ideological purity”. In a social media video, he highlighted his credentials as having been home and foreign secretary, as well as serving as party chairman when the Tories won the election in 2019. Mr Cleverly was first elected as the Conservative MP for Braintree in May 2015. After an injury cut short his army career, he graduated with a business degree and joined the Territorial Army. He worked in magazine and digital publishing before setting up his own business. He was a London Assembly member before he became an MP. Ms Patel is a long-standing Eurosceptic who has said she was inspired to join the Conservative Party by Margaret Thatcher. She became an MP in 2010 and served in cabinet positions under Theresa May and Mr Johnson, as international development secretary and home secretary, respectively. Ms Patel was a leading figure in the Vote Leave campaign, and as home secretary launched a points-based immigration system, signed the agreement with Rwanda to send asylum seekers to the country, and sealed returns deals with Albania and Serbia . She resigned as home secretary after Liz Truss became Tory leader. She said she could deliver the “experienced and strong” leadership needed to unite the Tories’ disparate factions. Launching her leadership bid with a Telegraph column, she said she would use the “huge talent pool … of Conservative Party members” to “solve the big challenges that Labour , the Lib Dems and Reform don’t have answers to”. Shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride is one of Mr Sunak’s closest allies and his frequent media appearances made him the face of the Tory campaign in the run-up to the election disaster. The MP for Central Devon said he believed he was the right person to “unite the party”. “We’ve substantially lost the trust of the British people and we’ve lost our reputation for competence, and I believe that I’m in a very good position to address those issues going forward,” he said. The winner will be announced on November 2 after a vote of party members The four candidates will set out their stalls at the Conservative Party conference between September 29 and October 2. MPs will then vote twice more, on October 9 and 10, and each time the candidate coming last will be removed from the field. Once two candidates remain, the party membership will cast their votes on October 31.

Who's still in the Conservative leadership race?

Four hopefuls take to the stage in Birmingham in a bid to replace Rishi Sunak after general election mauling