Jeremy Hunt has ruled himself out of the race to become the next leader of the Conservative Party.
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has resigned as party leader following Labour's landslide victory in the general election. Several Conservative MPs are pursuing the post.
However, Hunt, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, is not one of them, despite being one of the former Conservative ministers who retained their constituency seat – unlike the 12 others who did not.
On Saturday he told GB News: “No, those days are over.”
This means Hunt will not make a third attempt to become leader of the Conservative Party, after unsuccessfully contesting the position in 2019 and 2022.
The former Minister of the Interior Suella Braverman has not yet ruled herself out of the race, saying on Saturday that there were “no announcements”. She added: “We just have to take our time, we have to figure out what the situation is.”
Several of the Conservative Party's 'big boys', once seen as leadership candidates, such as Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps, have dropped out of the race after losing their seats.
Sunak said he would step down as party leader once arrangements were in place to choose his successor.
Yahoo News UK takes a look at which candidates are still in the running to become leader of the Conservative Party and what their latest bets are according to OddsChecker.
Kemi Badenoch (15/8)
Kemi Badenoch was Economy Secretary in Sunak's government.
She is popular with the Conservative grassroots and stood for the party's leadership in 2022. Earlier this year she did not rule out another leadership bid, saying: “We will discuss leadership issues after the election.”
Badenoch was also Minister for Women and Equality, and promised to amend the Equality Act to rewrite the definition of gender and allow organisations to ban transgender people from gender-only spaces.
She was recently embroiled in a row with actor David Tennant, who said at the British LGBT Awards: “Until we wake up and Kemi Badenoch is no more, I don't wish her any harm, I just want her to keep her mouth shut…” Badenoch accused him of being a “rich, left-wing, white male celebrity who is so blinded by ideology”.
Seating: Badenoch won her seat of North West Essex by 19,360 votes, compared to 16,750 for the Labour candidate.
Tom Tugendhat (4/1)
Tom Tugendhat was appointed Security Secretary by Liz Truss in September 2022.
Like Badenoch, he ran for party leadership that year and has not ruled out another bid.
Tugendhat, who ran for president in 2016 and remains a party executive, is seen as one of the more moderate leadership candidates.
Seating: Tugendhat won his seat of Tonbridge by more than 20,000 votes.
Robert Jenrick (7/2)
Former Immigration Secretary Robert Jenrick denied last month that he had fired the first shot in the race to replace Sunak when he wrote an opinion piece described by The Mail on Sunday as “a factual set-out of his manifesto”.
Jenrick used the article to say that the Conservatives are the “natural home for reform-minded voters” and that former Prime Minister Boris Johnson should “always have a place” in the Tories, including in Parliament, should he want it.
The Newark MP resigned as minister last December after claiming the then-proposed bill to revive Rwanda's deportation policy “did not go far enough”.
Seat: Jenrick retained his seat in Newark by more than 20,000 votes.
Dame Priti Patel (7/1)
Priti Patel was Home Secretary in Boris Johnson's cabinet between 2019 and 2022.
Patel is also popular with Conservative supporters. He is a hardliner on immigration and was the minister who introduced the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda in small boats in April 2022, a policy that faced multiple legal challenges before becoming law. But it had still not come into effect when Sunak called an election in May.
During her tenure, Patel was accused of bullying her staff, but Johnson rejected an official finding that she had breached the ministerial code, allowing her to remain in her post.
Seating: Patel won in Witham by 18,827 votes, ahead of Labour by 13,682.
James Slim (7/1)
James Cleverly, who was Home Secretary, has not yet made his intentions known, telling Sky News after his re-election as MP: “What happens in the future, I will leave for the immediate future.”
Cleverly is a centrist who previously served as Foreign Secretary and was first elected as the Conservative MP for Braintree in May 2015.
After an injury ended his military career, he earned a degree in business administration and joined the Territorial Army. Cleverly worked in magazines and digital publishing before starting his own company.
Seat: Cleverly was successful in Braintree, receiving 17,414 votes to 13,744 for his Labour challenger.
Suella Braverman (11/1)
Suella Braverman is another former interior minister seen as a leadership contender.
She was sacked by Sunak in November last year but has since spoken out strongly against his administration, urging the party to move to the right after the disastrous local election results in May.
Seating:Braverman won the reshuffled seat of Fareham and Waterlooville at the election with 17,561 votes, compared to the Labour candidate's 11,482 votes.
Nigel Farage (16/1)
Although he eventually became an MP on the eighth attempt, the Reform UK leader can still be expected to become the next Tory leader, although that now seems unlikely.
Under Conservative Party rules, leadership candidates must be MPs. This meant that Farage – if he wanted to and the party wanted him – could switch to the Tories and stand for a future leadership vacancy.
Seating: Farage won 46% of the vote in Clacton and became an MP for the Reformist Party in the United Kingdom, gaining 21,225 votes.
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