Who Is Angling To Replace Sunak As Next Tory Leader?

Barring some kind of cataclysmic disaster this week, Rishi Sunak seems safe as Conservative leader. Even if things go moderately wrong for him, his position should be assured this close to a general election.

- SEAN O'GRADY

Theresa May, whose cough-addled oration in 2017 was delivered against a disintegrating backdrop and interrupted by a prankster handing her a P45, managed to hang on for another 18 months.

Despite wild talk about votes of confidence, and Priti Patel placing herself at the head of a grassroots “peasants’ revolt”, the prime minister is not likely to be going anywhere quite yet. But that doesn’t mean that others aren’t looking to the post-Sunak future, and going on manoeuvres...

Who’s jostling?

The list of potential successors to Sunak – should the party lose the election – is an unusually long one. The favourite at the moment among activists, according to the always entertaining Conservative Home survey, is Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary. A formidable performer and a protege of Michael Gove, she staged a respectable bid for the leadership from nowhere last year, and currently enjoys a 65 per cent approval rating among the membership – the highest in the cabinet.

A sure sign that a contender means business is a tendency to start talking about issues way beyond their brief. Thus Badenoch, not for the first time, has strayed well away from economic matters, and echoed (her rival) Suella Braverman’s suggestion that the UK should campaign to reform international conventions on refugees: “It’s certainly not racist to talk about reviewing conventions which we joined 100 years ago. I think that is a ridiculous argument.”