Mel Stride has been knocked out of the race to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative party leader after the second round of voting by MPs.
The former work and pensions secretary on Tuesday became the second casualty in the weeks-long leadership contest, which is due to culminate in early November.
Stride got 16 votes from colleagues, finishing bottom of the remaining five MPs vying for the leadership after Priti Patel was knocked out in the first round.
For the second time the former immigration minister Robert Jenrick finished top of the closely contested ballot, finishing with 33 votes, up five on the first round.
Kemi Badenoch came second with 28 votes, up six on the previous round. James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat were joint third place with 21 votes each. Cleverly’s number of votes stayed steady while Tugendhat’s tally went up by four. There were 119 votes cast by Conservative MPs in total, with no spoilt ballots.
The four surviving candidates – Jenrick, Badenoch, Cleverly and Tugendhat – will now be subject to a “beauty contest” at the Conservative party conference in early October, where they will make their case to party members.
After the conference MPs will whittle down the list of candidates to a final two, with the final winner to be decided by a vote of the party’s grassroots membership.
Under plans drafted by Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ), the four candidates will reportedly only be given 10 minutes each to make their pitch from the main stage at the conference.
The results were announced by Bob Blackman, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Stride was a regular fixture on television and radio during the election, but was relatively little known compared with some of his more high-profile leadership rivals.
He was the only one of the six not to officially launch his campaign before the first round of voting, saying he would only do so if he made it through to later rounds.
Source: theguardian.com
