Conservative MPs in the European Research Group (ERG) are split over which candidate will best champion the Brexit cause, pointing to a wider fracture on the right of the party over a contender to take on frontrunner Rishi Sunak.
It appeared likely that attorney general Suella Braverman would absorb the backing of the Tory group after ERG deputy chair David Jones and senior ERG figure Sir Bernard Jenkin backed her on Wednesday.
But Mark Francois, chair of the ERG, revealed that he was supporting her rival Liz Truss, a Remain voter who has since burnished her credentials with a hardline stance on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
“I have personally decided to vote for Liz Truss to be our next prime minister,” Mr Francois told The Telegraph on his favoured successor to Boris Johnson.
“The foreign secretary’s tax-cutting agenda is drawing support from right across the party,” he added. “She possesses both the experience and leadership ability to unite the Conservative Party in challenging times.”
Mr Francois is voting the same way as ardent Brexiteers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries – who claimed Ms Truss was “a stronger Brexiteer than both of us”.
His old ally Steve Baker, the former ERG chair and self-styled “Brexit hardman”, has been a leading backer of Ms Braverman’s campaign – saying it was vital that the next prime minister has “genuine belief in Brexit”.
While some Brexiteer in the party are opting for Kemi Badenoch, Leave campaigner John Baron, another leading figure in the ERG, has thrown his weight behind Penny Mordaunt.
But Mr Baker has decried Ms Mordaunt’s credentials on Brexit legislation, telling LBC: “I’m sorry Penny but where were you when I needed you? She was supposed to be a Brexiteer.”
Sir Bernard, chair of the ERG steering committee, said Ms Braverman was “one of bravest and most principled people I’ve ever met” and someone who “did not compromise” on Brexit.
A Tory source told The Independent the ERG had agreed on Tuesday to back both Ms Truss and Ms Braverman to keep them in the race for now.
Brexiteer Esther McVey raised eyebrows by joining Jeremy Hunt’s team at the weekend, as the moderate former health secretary sought to win over some support from Leave campaigners in the party.
Comparing her to Tony Blair’s foil John Prescott, Mr Hunt said he would make McVey his deputy PM. “She has won a lot of elections against Labour in the north, I have won them against Lib Dems in the south.”
Ms Truss has appealed to Brexiteers by claiming she was a “reluctant Remainer” at the 2016 Brexit referendum. “If I could vote now, I would vote to leave the European Union,” she told The Spectator.
She added: “I was a reluctant Remainer. I was loyal to the prime minister at the time, David Cameron.”
The foreign secretary also told Tory MPs she was “prepared” to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights if reforms aimed at reducing the influence of judges in Strasbourg are not successful.
However, Ms Truss’s team have insisted that such a move would be a last resort. The contender’s preferred way of reducing the influence of Strasbourg’s European Court of Human Rights would be through the government’s proposed “bill of rights”.
Mr Hunt and fellow candidate Tom Tugendhat have vowed to press ahead with Mr Johnson’s controversial legislation to unilaterally ditch protocol checks in defiance of the EU.
The Remain-backing moderates have both promised to press ahead with the Northern Ireland Protocol bill, despite warnings it will break international law.
