Tory leadership race: LabourList readers prefer Tugendhat but expect Badenoch

A contest to select the next leader of the Conservative Party will soon begin after Rishi Sunak announced he will be stepping down following Labour’s landslide general election victory earlier this month.

No timeline for the contest to replace the former Prime Minister has yet been set, but a Conservative Party spokesperson told The Guardian on Thursday that the executive of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs “will meet again and announce the leadership process next week”.

LabourList asked readers of our daily briefing email on Friday afternoon who they would most prefer to be the new leader of the Tory Party, who they would least like to see as the new leader, and who they think is most likely to emerge victorious – based on a runners and riders list compiled by Politico. Some 425 readers had responded by Monday afternoon.

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Who LabourList readers want as Tory leader

More than 50% of respondents said they would prefer shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat to be the new leader of the opposition.

That puts him ahead of Shadow Health Secretary Victoria Atkins on 60 votes (14.9%) and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman on 56 votes (13.9%).

Who LabourList readers expect to be the next Conservative leader

But 52.1% of respondents said they think Shadow Housing Secretary Kemi Badenoch is most likely to be the new leader of the Conservative Party.

That puts her well ahead of Shadow Home Secretary James Cleverly on 60 votes (14.7%) in second and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick on 50 votes (12.2%) in third.

And who LabourList readers want least…

Braverman was identified by readers as the person they would least like to see as the next Tory leader, with 227 votes (54.4%), ahead of Badenoch on 68 votes (16.3%) and Tugendhat on 45 votes (10.8%).

As the leading dedicated Labour news site with readers across the party, LabourList hopes the poll may give some clues about Labour members’ views on the leadership contest.

It should still be handled with some caution, however. LabourList is not suggesting this is a scientific, weighted poll that provides an exact representation of the views of all party members at large. While many members read our daily email, anyone can subscribe to it, and anyone can fill in the poll, member or not.

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It is also worth noting that we launched this poll on Friday afternoon based on Politico’s runners and riders list from earlier in July, and so other candidates for leader may emerge.

For example, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said this morning there is a “reasonable chance” he could run and that he will make a decision “relatively soon”.

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