The former immigration minister and chief whip Mark Harper has become the 12th Conservative MP to declare his candidacy for the party’s leadership.
Harper was behind the controversial “go-home” vans when working under Theresa May at the Home Office. He resigned as immigration minister in 2014 after it emerged he was employing a cleaner who did not have permission to work in the UK. He later served as David Cameron’s chief whip.
But he has not served in Theresa May’s government and has, therefore, sought to cast himself as the candidate who offers “fresh thinking”.
“We’ve seen basically the same faces saying the same things that they’ve been saying for the last three years. A number of them have tried to position themselves as fresh faces but I’m afraid they’ve sat around the cabinet table sharing the responsibility with the prime minister,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
Harper pledged a new approach to leading the party if elected, including engaging in greater consultation with the Irish government and his Tory colleagues over Brexit.
He said he was “quite happy to acknowledge that, in this contest, I am the underdog”.
A Conservative leadership contest has two stages.
First, MPs vote for their choice from the nominated candidates. In each round of voting, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated from the contest. MPs vote again, until there are only two challengers remaining. This usually takes place over several days, and candidates often withdraw from the process if they see they have no chance of winning.
The second stage is a postal ballot of Conservative party members to chose one of the two candidates, meaning around 120,000 people will choose the UK's next prime minister.
Theresa May will formally resign on 7 June, and nominations to be leader are expected to close the following week. The contest should be finished by the end of July.
Harper campaigned for remain in 2016 and he suggested a further delay to Brexit beyond 31 October could be needed if the next prime minister wanted to renegotiate the deal – something some of his rivals have already ruled out.
Esther McVey has said the UK needs to “actively embrace leaving the EU without a deal”, while Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab have both said they would work to renegotiate the terms on offer with Brussels but would make sure the UK leaves on 31 October, with or without an agreement.
Paying tribute to him when he resigned as a junior minister in her Home Office in 2014, May said Harper could be “proud of the role he has played in sharply reducing immigration to Britain”.
