Tom Tugendhat Knocked Out Of Tory Leadership Race

Tom Tugendhat gave a speech to Conservative Party conference (Alamy)

3 min read2 hr

Tom Tugendhat has been voted out of the race to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.

Tugendhat, the former Minister of State for Security, was one of four remaining candidates running to succeed Rishi Sunak as Leader of the Opposition after he led the Tories to defeat at the July General Election.

The others are Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick, who are all former Cabinet ministers.

The candidates received the following number of votes in the third MPs' ballot on Tuesday:

Cleverly: 39
Jenrick: 31
Badenoch: 30
Tugendhat: 20

Tugendhat is a leading member of the One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs which identifies as the more moderate wing of the party.

Cleverly gained an additional 18 votes since the last round, emerging as the most popular among MPs after the party's conference last week. Despite having been seen as an outsider when he entered the race, Cleverly's speech at conference was well-received by MPs and led to senior Tories such as former work and pensions secretary Mel Stride publicly backing him.

In comparison, Jenrick and Badenoch saw little change in their support since the last round of voting, with Jenrick losing two votes over conference season and Badenoch gaining two. This latest round will be a particular blow for Jenrick's campaign after his allies said last month that he was "nailed on" to reach the final two.

After their worst general election defeat ever, there is a debate among Tories over the direction the party should now pursue to win again. Some MPs consider Tugendhat and his One Nation colleagues to be “unconservative”, with one MP who lost his seat on 4 July telling PoliticsHome that they would leave the Tories and join Nigel Farage's Reform UK if Tugendhat became leader.

Tugendhat told PoliticsHome in August that he would want to "reform the Conservative Party" rather than "become Reform".

Stride and former home secretary Priti Patel were both knocked out of the contest in previous voting rounds, and another candidate will be eliminated in another round of voting on Wednesday.

The two remaining candidates will then have the opportunity to set out their pitch to Tory members over the next few weeks, before the members choose the winner at the beginning of November.

As well as opposing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whoever succeeds Sunak will manage a party of 121 MPs — the smallest cohort any Conservative party leader will have overseen in more than two centuries. More than 20 per cent of that figure are new MPs elected in July.

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