• Home
• /
• World

Factbox: Who are the UK Conservative leadership hopefuls?

Jenrick, Badenoch, Cleverly, and Tugendhat are in the race to replace Rishi Sunak

Four hopefuls are left in the race to become leader of the Conservatives, a race set to shape the future direction of Britain's once dominant party.

The contest to replace former prime minister Rishi Sunak will run until November 2, after Conservative members cast the final ballots for a new leader, charged with turning around the fortunes of a party decimated in a July election by Labour. Below are the main policies for the remaining four contenders:

Robert Jenrick

Jenrick raised his profile when he quit as an immigration minister under Sunak over what he called the "fatally flawed" Rwanda plan to send asylum seekers to the African nation. Then, he said it was not robust enough.

Jenrick, 42, has undergone a transformation from being a solid centrist of the party to moving towards the right with his strong criticism of immigration policies — a shift which has prompted some in the party to question his motives.

He says the only way to tackle rising levels of immigration is to set a cap on legal migration in the tens of thousands and to detain and remove within days to a safe third country such as Rwanda those migrants who enter the country illegally.

He also advocates for Britain to leave the European Convention of Human Rights, a treaty agreed by almost every European nation, to help tackle migration. "The public are demanding action on this, they are aghast at what is happening in the English Channel, and if we were lucky enough to re-enter government, the public would not give us a third chance," he told journalists in early September.

Kemi Badenoch

Badenoch, a 44-year-old former trade minister, has positioned herself as an outspoken darling of not just the right-wing of the party but of younger lawmakers, promising to be "something different", a challenging voice in what she describes as a broken government system. Criticised by some, yet adored by others, for her outspoken views on Brexit and on what she calls "identity politics", Badenoch used her campaign launch earlier this month to set out her principles which she listed as personal responsibility, citizenship, equality under the law, family and truth.

In a speech, in which she drew upon her upbringing in Nigeria, she pledged to "rebuild the party, rewire the state, reboot the economy, revive our country and make it go places".

"It's time for something different. The British people are yearning for something better — and this Labour government is not it," she told an audience at her glitzy launch event.

James Cleverly

A former interior and foreign minister, Cleverly has boosted his credentials as the Conservatives' "best communicator", saying only he could unite the right of the party with its more moderate wing. "I am uniquely suited to unite the party, to win at the next general election, to deliver for the British people once again," the 55-year-old former army reserve officer told his launch event.

He has sought to use his record in the interior ministry to show he can take action on immigration, saying he would resurrect the previous Conservative government's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

In what he described as an "unstable world", he has also pledged to increase defence spending to three per cent of GDP.

Tom Tugendhat

Former soldier Tugendhat, 51, has presented himself in the leadership campaign as a safe pair of hands, a politician who is loyal to those he serves but also relatively untainted by the scandals that have brought the Conservative Party low.

Announcing that his campaign would be "sober, it will earn and deserve trust", Tugendhat — seen as a moderate in the party — said this week his priorities would be reconnecting all parts of the United Kingdom, strengthening foreign policy, tackling migration and reforming public services.

He said a new Conservative government would have to plan to spend three per cent of GDP on defence and the country needed clear immigration targets — a maximum level for net migration of 100,000 people a year. "This is no time for a novice," he said at his launch campaign earlier this month.