Mel Stride eliminated from Tory leadership contest

Mel Stride has been voted out of the race to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.

Stride, the former work and pensions secretary, was one of five 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, Robert Jenrick, and Tom Tugendhat, who are all also former Cabinet ministers.

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

• Badenoch: 28
• Cleverly: 21
• Jenrick: 33
• Stride: 16
• Tugendhat: 21

Stride was considered somewhat of an underdog in the contest from the start, having arranged his campaign team later than many of the other candidates.

He told PoliticsHome last month that if he became party leader, he would want to “radically drive change” in the Tory party in the wake of its shattering election defeat, including a “complete overhaul” of the campaign structure.

Former home secretary Priti Patel was knocked out of the first round of MP voting on 4 September, after only securing 14 votes.

The four remaining candidates will have the opportunity to set out their pitch to Tory members at the party's autumn conference, which will take place in Birmingham between 29 September and 2 October.

Following conference, Tory MPs will vote again to reduce the number of candidates to the final two. The winner, and the next leader of the opposition, will be chosen by the party members in early 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.

This story originally appeared on our sister website, PoliticsHome.