When the Conservative MPs who remain return to Westminster, they will briefly seem like some of the most popular people in SW1. With the party so reduced in numbers, over the next few days there will be a furious wooing of those who have not yet declared for one of the six leadership candidates.
“The race is wide open,” one senior Tory said. “There are barely any public endorsements so no one can tell who is the favourite. The public polling has been all over the place. Often they seem to be just based on who has paid for it.”
The former business secretary Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick the former immigration minister are the bookies’ favourites – but both have significant detractors and are fishing in the same pool of voters. Similarly, Tom Tugendhat, the most obvious choice of the One Nation wing, is duking it out with James Cleverly.
Most MPs expect Priti Patel and Mel Stride to be the candidates who fall when MPs whittle the candidates down to four before the party’s conference. But Patel has a close following in the party membership, and Stride has racked up a significant number of public endorsements from MPs.
The numbers are extremely tight because of the decimation of the parliamentary party. With six candidates needing 10 supportive MPs, at least 60 of the party’s 121 MPs are accounted for. A significant chunk more are unlikely to declare publicly, including whips and members of the party board.
“It’s honestly something like 30 MPs who will decide it at the first stage,” one senior campaign source said.
One Tory insider said they believed about 30 MPs would not publicly back any candidate, instead privately swearing loyalty to several: “The biggest cohort among Tory MPs are the careerists. They just want to back the winner.”
Boris Johnson, while a close friend of Patel, is not expected to back anyone yet. Asked at her campaign launch on Friday if the former PM supported her, Patel praised Johnson as “phenomenal for this country” but refused to elaborate.
After the final campaign launches over the weekend and Monday, the candidates will have a closed-door leadership hustings with MPs on Tuesday, before the first round of voting on Wednesday. This will eliminate at least one candidate.
Another round of voting, if needed, will reduce the field to the four candidates who will take part in a “beauty parade” at conference. After that, MPs will whittle it down to two, who will be put to the members for a vote. The result will not come until 2 November.
Jenrick, the only candidate to formally launch his campaign before the summer, will hold a rally in Westminster on Sunday. Once close to Rishi Sunak, he has reinvented himself as a migration hardliner, racking up the most endorsements, including high-profile MPs on the right.
“He’s basically the nicer face of Suella [Braverman],” one backer said. His core supporters among MPs include rightwingers such as John Hayes and Danny Kruger, but also the former minister John Lamont.
Jenrick’s backers say they know he has the most to do to make himself known to the membership and he has spent the summer touring Tory constituency associations, visiting 16 in the last week alone.
“He’s the Princess Anne of the contest,” said one ally. “He turns up anywhere that will have him, gives lots of speeches and meets everyone.”
His supporters reject suggestions that he is not a “true” rightwinger, citing his decision to quit as immigration minister over Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan for asylum seekers.
But rival supporters say they believe the rise of Jenrick’s star has been almost entirely manufactured. He is the 33rd best-known Conservative, according to YouGov.
“Rob’s whole rise has been a Westminster thing,” said one. “I think members aren’t really sure why there has been such a fuss made of this guy who seems to have come from nowhere. That’s why conference is so important, because you’ll see who has the momentum, who members are queueing up to see. It could all change there.”
Badenoch will launch her campaign on Monday after spending time in August on a family holiday, a decision which has drawn sniping from her rivals.
The claim from Badenoch’s team that members and MPs would not begrudge the “next leader” taking a holiday after the general election prompted derision from a source in another campaign: “If she thinks the six-week election campaign was hard, perhaps being leader of the opposition isn’t for her.”
There is already a determined “anybody but Kemi” campaign among MPs who have, over the years, fallen foul of her apparent abrasive behaviour.
“She could actually blow up and cause real and lasting damage that the party can’t recover from,” said one foe. “Another disastrous leader with a Truss-style meltdown could tip us over the edge.”
The third candidate with a well-resourced and funded operation is Tugendhat, the former security minister, who has made particular overtures to new MPs.
He won the coveted endorsement of Nick Timothy, a new MP who was previously chief of staff to Theresa May and is seen as a key Tory thinker.
It has added credibility to Tugendhat’s determination not to be seen as the token wet in the contest. He also used a speech on Thursday to propose a legally enforceable migration cap, and to suggest he may pull Britain out of the European convention on human rights.
Tugendhat has also undertaken a determined ground campaign, visiting more than 100 associations. But his speech was attended by few key party figures.
Some MPs believe Cleverly, the former home secretary, has an outside chance, citing popularity with the membership and a unifying approach. One supporter said: “James is the only candidate who is focusing on how the Tories can actually win power again, rather than an internal battle over the right which only ends one way.”
Patel’s speech, also in Westminster, saw a good turnout of members but focused more on homilies based around her mantra of party unity than specific policies, even when she was asked to name some.
“The British people are where my compass is, and that’s where we need to be as a party,” she said, in one slightly gnomic utterance.
• This article was amended on 2 September 2024. An earlier version stated incorrectly that the former minister Jesse Norman supported Robert Jenrick in the leadership campaign.
