Tom Tugendhat knocked out of Tory leadership race

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

Tugendhat, the former security minister, 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 number of following votes in the third MPs' ballot on Tuesday:

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

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

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".

Former work and pensions secretary Mel 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.

This story originally appeared on Holyrood's sister website, PoliticsHome.