How the new prime minister will be chosen

Nick Gutteridge 20 October 2022 8:24pm BST Tory leadership candidates will need to secure the backing of at latest 100 MPs over the weekend to make the final ballot, it has been announced.

Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee, said the high threshold would speed up the contest to replace Liz Truss after she quit on Thursday. It means a maximum of three hopefuls

will be able to take part in the race and comes after senior Tories expressed hopes for a swift “coronation”.   In a key development, Conservative bosses also announced that MPs will get an

“indicative vote” on the final two before they are put to members. If one of the last pair were to win that ballot by a huge margin, the loser would come under enormous pressure to stand

aside for them. Addressing reporters outside Parliament, Sir Graham said that the contest would be wrapped up by the end of next Friday at the latest. He admitted to having set a “high

threshold” but said it would be “achievable by any serious candidate that has a realistic prospect of going through”. Speaking alongside him Jake Berry, the Conservative chairman, said the

race for No 10 would be “rapid” and had been sped up “in the national interest”. “We will continue to act quickly to ensure this country has the stability it requires,” he said. Tory HQ has

announced the timetable for the quickfire competition which will take just a week - eight times shorter than the last one. Nominations opened on Thursday and will close at 2pm on Monday. Sir

Graham said a hustings debate will then be held. If three leadership hopefuls make the cut, a ballot of Tory MPs will take place at 3.30pm to eliminate one, with the result announced at

6pm. Either way an indicative vote between the final two will be held at 6.30pm and the result of that will be declared at 9pm. At that point the loser might choose to drop out and allow a

coronation, in which case the remaining candidate would immediately become Prime Minister. But if they refused to do so, the contest would immediately proceed to an online ballot of party

members for the rest of the week. That would close at 11am next Friday, with Conservative officials saying the final result of the contest would be announced “later that day”. Leadership

contest timetable Tory headquarters said that only members who had joined the party more than three months ago would be able to cast ballots in the contest. Mr Berry also sought to allay

fears about the online voting system, insisting it would be “secure” from possible interference. The party had intended to offer online voting as an option during the summer leadership race

but pulled it at the last minute over hacking fears.   Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt are all expected to run for the leadership and are already attracting the support of MPs.

The former chancellor, who came second to Ms Truss over the summer, led the early public declarations and swiftly attracted 21 backers. Mr Johnson was only just behind with 19 declarations,

while in the first few hours nine MPs had come out for Ms Mordaunt. Who do you want to be the next Tory leader? The decision to organise a snap vote of Conservative members may favour the

ex-prime minister, who remains popular among the grassroots. But there were doubts over whether Mr Johnson could muster 100 supporters, with anger among MPs over his ousting still strong. Ms

Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, also polled well among the membership before being knocked out of last summer’s contest. But recent polls have suggested the party faithful have warmed

to Mr Sunak after his warnings of economic chaos came to pass. A survey published on Tuesday, before Ms Truss resigned, found that 55 per cent of members would have voted for him over her if

given another chance. But it also found that their most popular choice remained Mr Johnson, who was backed by 63 per cent as a good replacement in No 10. The YouGov survey showed that 32

per cent of members put the ex-prime minister as their top candidate, followed by Mr Sunak on 23 per cent. In that poll Mrs Mordaunt came in fourth place with nine per cent naming her as

their number one choice, with Ben Wallace in third on 10 per cent. Though many Conservative MPs want to arrange a coronation and cut out the membership, they have struggled to coalesce

around a unity candidate. Richard Graham, a Tory MP and member of the 1922 executive committee, said he did not think colleagues would be able to find one. “Obviously if everybody came

together and just supported one candidate then that makes everything simpler but I don’t think that will happen,” he said.