Selecting Boris Johnson or another hard Brexiter to be Conservative party leader is a vote for an early general election, Amber Rudd has warned as the crowded contest finally begins in earnest.
The work and pensions secretary, who has announced she is backing Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, to succeed Theresa May, criticised Johnson’s trenchant attitude towards leaving the EU on 31 October, saying: “I’m afraid that’s not enough if you haven’t got a plan behind it.”
Promises by Johnson, Dominic Raab and Esther McVey to leave without a deal if, as seems likely, the EU refuses to renegotiate the UK’s departure deal, would be blocked by MPs and end up triggering an election, Rudd said.
Asked if a vote for a no-deal candidate was, in effect, a vote for an early election, Rudd told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In my view it is.”
She said: “Members of parliament will find a way to stop no deal and I think that any aspiring leader needs to factor that in.
“I think there could be an election – parliament is a very creative place, and with the assistance of an activist Speaker there will be a way that MPs will find in order to have their voice heard.”
After May formally tendered her resignation on Friday, Hunt, Raab, the former Brexit secretary, and Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will launch their leadership bids on Monday.
Nominations for the post close at 5pm, by which point candidates must have gained at least eight nominations to proceed to the first round of voting. With 11 MPs standing, the expectation is that some will fail to reach the threshold.
What happens next in the Tory party leadership race?
As she announced on 24 May, Theresa May will step down formally as Conservative leader on Friday although she will remain in place as prime minister until her successor is chosen.
The rules for the contest to replace her have been tweaked by the backbench 1922 Committee, with the backing of the party’s board, in order to prevent the contest dragging on for weeks.
Nominations will close at 5.30pm next Monday. Candidates will have to show that they have the support of eight of their colleagues: a proposer, a seconder and six other MPs.
MPs will hold a series of votes, in order to narrow down the crowded field, which currently stands at eleven leadership hopefuls.
How does the voting work?
MPs choose one candidate, in a secret ballot held in a committee room in the House of Commons. The votes are tallied and the results announced on the same day.
The 1922 Committee has decided that after the first round, any candidate who wins the support of less than 17 MPs, will be eliminated. And after the second round, the threshold will be set at 33 MPs.
Rounds of voting will then continue until just two candidates remain. The first round will be held on Thursday 13 June from 10am to noon. Subsequent rounds have been pencilled in for the 18th, 19th and 20th.
The two remaining candidates will then be put to the Conservative membership for a vote.
When will the results be announced?
Once MPs have whittled down the field to two, Conservative party HQ takes over the running of the next stage, which it says will be completed in the week beginning Monday 22 July.
Will there be hustings?
Yes: MPs have organised a series of events themselves to put the candidates through their paces, kicking off with an event convened by the One Nation group on Tuesday evening. Conservative party HQ will organise its own events; and the BBC has also announced several televised debates between the candidates.
Johnson is the clear favourite, with other leading contenders including Hunt, Sajid Javid, the home secretary, and Michael Gove, the environment secretary. Gove’s chances are regarded to have been badly hit after he revealed he took cocaine while he was working as a journalist and advocating robust measures against drug use.
Rudd said her decision to back Hunt came after the One Nation group of Tory MPs, of which she is part, held hustings events for candidates last week.
“By the end of that double two-hour session it was clear to me that Jeremy was going to be the best person to solve the impasse,” Rudd said.
“We need somebody who faces up to the challenges that we have, who’s not just going to say: ‘Believe in Britain, it’ll be fine’, but has the experience and the plan to try and heal those divisions and actually bring us to Brexit as soon as possible.”
While Johnson had “many great things” about him, Rudd said, his plans for Brexit were too vague: “To me, it’s not enough to say, we’re definitely leaving by 31 October without addressing how you’re going to resolve it.”
She also criticised Johnson’s plan, announced overnight, to slash the higher rate of income tax: “If you want to badge yourself as a one-nation Conservative you focus on tax cuts and investment in infrastructure to help the lowest paid and people in most difficulty in all parts of this country. That’s not what he’s doing.”
Among the outsiders standing for the role is Andrea Leadsom, who recently resigned as leader of the Commons. While she has so far received only four public pledges of support, Leadsom said she was confident of gaining the eight needed.
Michael Gove
The environment secretary is to pitch himself as a “unity candidate” capable of attracting leavers and remainers, as he formally declared his candidacy saying: “I believe that I’m ready to unite the Conservative and Unionist party, ready to deliver Brexit and ready to lead this great country.” But robust Brexiters in particular dislike the fact that he stayed loyal even in the final days of the crumbling May regime.
He received 37 votes in the first round, coming third.
Matt Hancock
The health secretary remains a relative outsider, but the longer the race goes on, the more he gains ground for the seemingly basic virtues of being apparently competent and broadly similar to a normal human being, albeit a particularly energetic one. A concerted effort would probably require an image consultant.
He received 20 votes in the first round.
Jeremy Hunt
Fears that the foreign secretary would be another overly woolly compromise choice were hardly assuaged when after a set-piece speech he seemed unable to outline why his brand of Conservatism might appeal to voters. Hunt has been backed by Liam Fox.
He received 43 votes in the first round, placing him second.
Sajid Javid
The home secretary still has the same weaknesses: he is an uninspiring speaker and some worry he is too fond of headline-grabbing, illiberal political gestures. But he is almost as ubiquitous as Liz Truss, and clearly believes this is his time.
He received 23 votes in the first round.
Boris Johnson
The out-and-out favourite, so popular with the Tory grassroots that it would be hard for MPs to not make Johnson one of the final two. He has been relatively quiet recently, beyond his regular Telegraph column, but this is very deliberate.
Johnson won the first round with 114 votes.
Dominic Raab
The former work and pensions secretary, who quit last year over May’s Brexit plans, has launched her own in-party campaign group/leadership vehicle called Blue Collar Conservatism, promising to make the party more amenable to voters in deprived communities – mainly through a promise to deliver a strong Brexit and policies such as diverting much of the foreign aid budget to schools and police.
Raab got 27 votes in the first round.
Rory Stewart
Few things say “would-be leader in waiting” like a kitchen photoshoot with your spouse, and the former Brexit secretary duly obliged with this imageawash with tasteful pastel hues. He formally launched his bid in the Mail on Sunday. Among the more core constituency of Conservative MPs, Raab has been pushing hard, as has his semi-official “Ready for Raab” Twitter feed.
Stewart got 19 votes in the first round.
She also expressed doubt at Johnson’s tax plans, saying he had not taken account of the difficulties of passing legislation without an outright Conservative majority: “I think in reality, in this parliament, it would be impossible to actually get wholesale tax changes through.”
Leadsom termed her Brexit proposal a “managed exit”, a variant on no deal in which she would persuade the EU and parliament to agree some basic issues over citizens’ rights and other areas.
However, she dismissed the idea floated by Raab of proroguing, or suspending, parliament in order to prevent MPs blocking a no-deal departure in October.
“We live in a parliamentary democracy, and bringing the Queen in and trying to do something that shuts down our parliamentary democracy would be entirely wrong.”
