Tory leadership live: Badenoch and Jenrick wait to find out who will take over as Conservative leader – UK Times

The Conservative Party will appoint a new leader to replace Rishi Sunak this morning.

The final two candidates, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, were picked by the parliamentary party but the new leader is chosen through an online ballot of Conservative Party members that closed on 31 October.

The Tory leadership announcement is set to begin at 11am.

So bland, cautious and moderate was the former immigration minister turned rightwing leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick when he entered the Commons that he was nicknamed “Robert Generic”.

So far has Mr Jenrick travelled from his original centrist position that he has not only openly supported Donald Trump winning the US presidential election but also adopted the shock tactics so beloved of the Republican candidate and former president. Nothing better illustrated that than when he recently went jogging in London with a highly provocative “Hamas are terrorists” T-shirt.

Kemi Badenoch is the woman who always wanted to wear Margaret Thatcher’s “trousers”. As a child growing up in Nigeria’s patriarchal society, she saw Thatcher as her heroine; a self-made woman of power who was outspoken and uncompromising in her conviction.

“Whenever I was told I couldn’t do something because I was a girl, I would just say two words: Margaret Thatcher. And there was nothing they could say in response to that” says Badenoch. “She was inspirational.” Unbeknown at the time, the young Nigerian schoolgirl would not only go on to sit at the cabinet table where Thatcher ran Britain for over 11 years but would, today, be in the final moments of a battle to become the next leader of the Conservative and Unionist party.

The Tory party has been looking for a new Margaret Thatcher since it got rid of the last one. The hopes that Theresa May and Liz Truss would fit the bill came to nothing, but in Badenoch, they see a woman who, like Thatcher, is a leader who is willing to say what other politicians won’t.

Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick will be crowned as the new Conservative Party leader on Saturday, as the four-month-long race to replace Rishi Sunak reaches the finish line.

The result of the leadership ballot is expected to be announced late in the morning, with the members’ ballot having closed on Thursday.

The winner will be at the helm as the party looks to recover from the July election result which saw it return just 121 MPs.

After the close of polls on Thursday, both candidates thanked their backers for their support through the contest.

Ms Badenoch described the party as a “family” and said that it is “much more to me than a membership organisation”.

Mr Jenrick also called for the party to “move past the drama” of recent years and “unite”.

“Together we can put an end to the excuses, move past the drama, and unite our party,” he wrote on X.

Immigration, the economy, and how the Conservatives can rebuild trust with the electorate and win back voters they lost at the election have all been discussed at length through the campaign.

The party lost seats to Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK in the July poll.

Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly also put their names forward in the nominations at the end of July and spent the summer campaigning before they were each knocked out of the contest.