Two top Tories back Tom Tugendhat to be next Conservative leader
20 July 2024, 00:26
Two senior Conservatives have backed Tom Tugendhat to be the next party leader.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Steve Baker, a prominent Brexiteer, and Damian Green, a former Cabinet minister from the moderate wing of the party, endorsed shadow security minister Mr Tugendhat in a newspaper article.
Both Mr Baker and Mr Green lost their seats in the General Election, but remain influential in Conservative circles.
The race to be the new leader of the opposition has not begun yet, but Mr Tugendhat, shadow communities secretary Kemi Badenoch, shadow home secretary James Cleverly, former ministers Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick are all thought to be getting bids ready.
Mr Baker and Mr Green urged MPs not to turn to the "hard Right" in response to the pasting the Conservative Party received at the General Election.
Read more: Priti Patel to run for Tory leadership, sources say
They wrote in the Telegraph: "We ought to choose to transcend old divisions of Leave versus Remain, One Nation versus Right. We cannot spend the next five years in recriminations over the past 10. We cannot spend our time in opposition seeking to expel one wing of the party or another."
They added: "Some colleagues' tone often meant that we were cast as a 'hard-Right' party or the 'nasty' party, leading voters to turn against us or to whichever party in their area was most likely to rid them of us," they warned.
"That won't do. Our leader must be someone who can communicate robust ideas with resolve and humility so that the nation is carried, not divided.
"For these reasons - not despite but because we are from different wings of the Conservative Party - we both see Tom Tugendhat as the individual to deliver the leadership we need."
In a Conservative Home survey of 995 Tory Party members last week, Mr Tugendhat polled at 13% - in second place alongside Mr Jenrick, ahead of Ms Braverman (10%) and Mr Cleverly (9%).
Ms Badenoch polled first at 26%, with Ms Patel in sixth with 3%.
The 1922 Committee of backbenchers will set the rules and timeline for the race to succeed Rishi Sunak. There have been divisions in the party over how long the contest should take.
