‘Hugely significant’: Who’s in the race to become UK Conservatives leader?
Al Jazeera
Four candidates hope to rule over the party that is trying to recover from an historic electoral blow. Who are they, what are they promising?
London, United Kingdom – An outspoken 44-year-old who counts Margaret Thatcher as her hero, an ex-immigration minister who quit after claiming the controversial Rwanda scheme did not go “far enough”, a former soldier who jokes that he “invaded a country” when he served in Iraq, and a gaffe-prone Brexiteer who made a bad-taste remark about a date rape drug,
In that relative order, Conservative politicians Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly are vying in the United Kingdom for what has been dubbed the worst job in politics: leader of the opposition.
The hopefuls will make their cases at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, which began on Sunday and will continue until Wednesday.
Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, resigned as leader of the Conservatives after their disastrous performance in the July 4 general election. Priti Patel, a former home secretary and ex-cabinet minister Mel Stride were knocked out in earlier rounds of voting by Conservative MPs.
Those legislators will vote on October 9 and 10 to whittle the contest down to two candidates. Those belonging to the party membership, estimated to be more than 170,000 people, will then cast their ballots.
