Tory leadership candidates have been making their formal pitches in advance of the first round of voting, which will take place on Thursday.
Jeremy Hunt
The foreign secretary launched his campaign on a high after winning the backing of Penny Mordaunt, the defence secretary and a key Brexit supporter. This was his second coup of the week after gaining the support of Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary and leading Tory moderate.
He made the case that he was the most serious and experienced would-be leader, in an apparent rebuke to his main rival, Boris Johnson.
Hunt, who is becoming the bookies’ second favourite in the race, gave a speech in London, with his wife, Lucia, numerous MPs and other supporters in the audience.
Hunt’s pitch was that he would deliver Brexit before allowing a general election, saying the failure to leave the EU had “put our country and our party in grave peril”.
“Without a deal, any prime minister who promised to leave by a certain date would have to call a general election to change the parliamentary arithmetic. And that is an election we would lose badly,” he said. “If we fight an election before delivering Brexit, we will be annihilated.”
Matt Hancock
The health secretary said he wanted his campaign to be about a “front story”, not a backstory, and said the Conservative party was in danger of allowing its obsession with Brexit to stop it focusing on the future.
In front of an audience of young entrepreneurs and artists, and standing in front of a window that made him look like a talking silhouette, he likened the Tory leadership contest to politics in the 1840s. “Most politicians were still banging on about the Corn Laws, while the industrial revolution was fundamentally changing the lives of every person in this country,” he said.
Hancock, an outsider candidate, suggested those who would take the UK out of the EU with no deal were not confronting the political reality and berated his rivals for suggesting proroguing parliament was an option, saying it was an affront to D-day veterans. “That goes against everything those men who fought their way up those beaches died for,” he said.
He also said the next Tory leader had to be certain of their beliefs in another coded swipe at Johnson. “The only way you can do the job is if you know your heart – if you’re honest to yourself and know what you stand for.”
Hancock said he was in favour of low taxes and hinted that he could cut corporation tax, but said his priority was to raise the national living wage to two-thirds of average incomes, over £10 an hour, by 2022. He also previewed measures that may be in the government’s social care green paper – such as insurance for people to protect their homes if they need long-term social care.
Dominic Raab
The former Brexit secretary has had a rocky start to his campaign after telling broadcasters he was not a feminist and missing out on a slew of endorsements from the Brexiter right of the party, which instead went to Johnson over the weekend.
In his speech on Monday morning, Raab offered a take-no-prisoners approach to the Brexit negotiations, promising a tough new stance with Brussels, but refusing to rule out proroguing parliament in order to deliver a no-deal Brexit in October, if no new concessions can be agreed.
“We’ve been humiliated as a country in these talks with the EU,” he said. “We’re divided at home, and demeaned abroad.”
He said he still believed the UK could have got a different deal to the backstop if the team had been united. In a dig at Johnson, as well as cabinet members who have resisted leaving with no deal, Raab said Brexit would not be delivered with “bluff and bluster” and said he would only pick a cabinet that was unanimously prepared to deliver no deal.
Quoting the Institute for Government, he said it would be “near-impossible for MPs to stop a prime minister who is determined to leave in this way”.
He said he would lead “a buccaneering approach to global free trade” – a phrase that raised eyebrows – and said the Conservatives’ priority should be the low-paid, in contrast to Johnson, who has offered sweeping tax cuts to the well-off.
Esther McVey
The former work and pensions secretary held what her camp billed as an official launch event, a speech to the ultra-Brexit Bruges Group, in Westminster.
McVey has also refused to rule out seeking to prorogue parliament to ensure that the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 31 October. She said she could ensure this by not allowing MPs any votes on the departure process before the deadline.
During a Q&A after the speech, she said remain-minded MPs had sought to frustrate the UK’s departure under Theresa May: “But that only happened because the prime minister kept bringing back motions to the floor of the house. So really we need to stop bringing things to the floor of the house, and the default position is to leave through article 50.”
She added: “What has happened is that people who have wanted to deny the will of the people, they have done absolutely everything to do so. What I am now seeking to do is make sure, as a public servant, we deliver what the public were offered.”
Her speech was briefly interrupted when a man took to the podium to yell about the event being “fake news”. He eventually left, and it was not immediately clear what he was angry about.
The address contained few new commitments. Most of her main policy ideas, notably a plan to raid the foreign aid budget for £7bn a year to spend on schools and the police, were revealed last month, when she launched her self-styled “blue-collar Conservatism” movement.
Michael Gove
The environment secretary, whose campaign plan was knocked off course at the weekend by revelations about drug-taking, sought to regain his place as the leading “Stop Boris” candidate with a launch peppered with policy pledges.
Gove told the event, in a Millbank skyscraper, that he was “in it to win it”. He said his record in office – as education and justice secretaries under David Cameron, and now as environment secretary under Theresa May – showed his “reforming zeal” and ability to get results.
He played up his senior role in the Vote Leave campaign, saying he had “led from the front” because he believed it was “the right thing to do, at a critical moment in our history”.
He repeated his plan for a “full stop to the backstop”, and reiterated that he would be willing to delay Brexit beyond the next deadline of 31 October if that was what it took to secure a deal.
Gove also announced a series of new policies, from a new social insurance to pay for social care to changing human rights law to prevent service personnel being pursued over historical crimes.
And he made several digs at the frontrunner and old sparring partner Johnson, including criticising his plans for a tax cut for higher earners. “The poor must come first,” he said.
Mark Harper
The most unknown name in the contest, Mark Harper, made his pitch as the only candidate who had not been involved in any of the decisions that had led to the current Brexit crisis.
Harper said all of his rivals, including those who had resigned, had “sat around the cabinet table and participated in decisions that have led to not leaving the European Union three years after the referendum”.
The former chief whip and immigration minister said he would not commit to leaving the EU by October, calling it “not credible to say you can renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and get it through both Houses of Parliament by 31 October”.
However, he suggested he would consider a no-deal Brexit at that point if no changes to the agreement were forthcoming from Brussels.
“If we approach our European Union partners in a spirit of openness, and we bust a gut, we do everything we can to get a deal, and they are simply not prepared to budge, then in those circumstances, and only in those circumstances, do I think there will be a majority in the House of Commons to leave without a deal,” he added.
During his launch, Harper was grilled on the hostile environment, including the “Go Home” vans he launched as immigration minister – a role from which he resigned after his cleaner was found not to have leave to remain in the UK.
Harper said he did not “resile from the message” of the vans but said they were “not successful and we didn’t do it again”.
The launch, billed as an ‘ask me anything’ event, ended with a tongue-in-cheek question about who would win in a fight – a lion or a bear? “On the basis that the lion is the symbol of Britain, I’m going to say the lion,” Harper said.
Andrea Leadsom
The former leader of the House of Commons began her campaign saying she would “never say never” to the prospect of a second Scottish independence referendum, saying she is a believer in devolution but opposed to a fresh vote in principle.
Speaking after her campaign launch on Tuesday morning, she suggested it would not be right for her to issue a blanket ban on any future referendum, even though she was against it.
“The reason I say ‘never say never’ is because I do not think that there should be another independence referendum in Scotland. I do not think it’s in their interest, but on the other hand, I am a big believer in devolution,” she said.
Leadsom said she believed another referendum could be avoided by working to strengthen the union. “What I think we have to be doing is promote the strength of the UK working together far stronger, far more than we have done, and I have a number of policy areas that I would use to try and make that happen,” she said.
Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart had the most unusual launch – in a circus tent, where he briefly seemed to tell an audience of 600 members of the public that he might be prepared to back a Labour motion to block a no-deal Brexit.
Stewart said he was “wholly supportive” of the principle of the motion to remove no deal as an option, even though he had not seen the detail yet. “A no-deal Brexit is not a credible threat,” he added.
Pressed on whether the decision would anger his party and lose him the vote, he said: “There is only one way of resolving this problem and that is through parliament.
“That’s a very, very uncomfortable truth ... But there is not going to be some brand new negotiation with Europe ... The solution has to lie on getting it through parliament.”
But he later said he had read the Labour motion and would not be voting for it.
Stewart launched his campaign on the South Bank in central London in a packed out, dimly lit cabaret tent adorned in red velvet. Performing with no notes, he left his podium at one moment to stand closer to the crowd.
But when asked whether his stellar performance would be swept aside by Boris Johnson, he jibed that he trusted the Tory membership not to make the mistake of backing the frontrunner.
“You speak to people across the country and ask them ‘do you really – I don’t want to make this too personal – feel that this is the person you want engaging with the detail on the future on your health and education system?’
“Do you really feel that this is the person you want writing the instructions to the nuclear submarines? Is this the man you want embodying your nation on the world stage and guiding you through the most difficult choice that Britain has faced for 50 years? I trust the Conservative members to arrive at the correct answer,” he said.
