The soap opera of the succession of Boris Johnson, leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, continues with three new suitors in the running, which now brings the number of applicants to eight.
By announcing his resignation Thursday, Boris Johnson indicated that he intended to remain in Downing Street until the new leader of the party was elected. The competition is therefore launched and on Saturday evening, three new candidates entered the ranks: the former Minister of Health Savid Javid (who resigned on Tuesday), the new Minister of Finance Nadhim Zahawi and the former Minister of Business Foreign Affairs and Health, Jeremy Hunt. Three party heavyweights. Jeremy Hunt, for example, had already faced Boris Johnson in 2019 for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
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In the previous episode yesterday, the former Minister of Finance Rishi Sunak -another heavyweight- also declared his candidacy, while the Minister of Defense Ben Wallace decided not to show up.
Other candidates, the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, an experienced MP who cut his teeth in the cabinet of former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, the former Secretary of State for Equality Kemi Badenoch, Attorney General Suella Braverman and MP Tom Tugendhat.
She has not yet entered the race but could be interested according to analysts, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Liz Truss, is well positioned according to a Channel 4 survey of members of the Conservative Party. She is considered a rising star of the Conservative Party.
New terms of designation?
Faced with this influx of candidates, the electoral process could be modified with an increase in the number of sponsorships and votes required in the first part of the designation process is envisaged, explained a member of the 1922 Committee, responsible for the internal organization of the party. . And this so that the two finalists can be known within two weeks, before the summer parliamentary truce which begins on July 22.
The 1922 Tory Committee
The Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, founded in 1923, is often mentioned in articles about planning the succession of Boris Johnson because of its role in the internal organization of the party. A role sometimes described as opaque…
Headed by Sir Graham Brady (since 2019), the committee is made up of all the so-called Conservative “backbench” MPs, that is to say who are not part of a ministerial cabinet. It has an 18-member executive committee whose chairman oversees the election of the party leader, or any vote of no confidence led by the Conservative party in the leader of the day. The president must be seized by 15% of the parliamentary group to organize the vote of no confidence. Thus in December 2018, Theresa May was confirmed by a vote organized by the committee on her Brexit policy. And Boris Johnson also escaped on June 6, 2022 from an internal sanction vote on his policy.
The committee is also referred to as “men in gray suits” (men in gray suits). When a Prime Minister is challenged, a delegation of Conservative MPs from the 1922 Committee travel to 10 Downing Street, the seat of the Prime Minister, to announce to the party leader that it is time for him or her to resign without going through an open challenge, that is to say a vote of no confidence.
The final vote of the members of the conservative party – 160,000 voters in the last internal election of 2019 – would then take place by the start of the school year, according to the scenario which seems to stand out in the British press, specifies AFP.
(and with agencies)