Kemi Badenoch launches Tory leadership bid - as rival Suella Braverman says she will not run to replace Sunak
28 July 2024, 21:34 | Updated: 28 July 2024, 21:38
Bookies favourite Kemi Badenoch has launched her bid to become Conservative leader - as rival Suella Braverman confirms she will not run to replace Rishi Sunak.
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Shadow Housing Secretary Ms Badenoch announced her candidacy in an opinion piece in the Times, saying that her party needs to unite around a clear set of values and policies in order to recover from their historic defeat in July's general election.
Ms Badenoch blamed infighting over Covid lockdowns and house-building for squandering the Tories' 80-seat majority won in 2019.
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Taking aim at rivals James Cleverly and Priti Patel Ms Badenoch said that "unity to win" was not enough to return her party to Government.
She said: “There is a bigger question of what it means to be a Conservative today. If there wasn’t, the Reform party would not exist.
"It is not enough to call for ‘unity to win’. We need to ask ourselves, ‘What are we uniting around? What are we winning for?"
“The 2019 election won us a majority to get Brexit done. That 80-seat majority disappeared after Brexit as disagreements emerged over lockdown policy, house building, state spending and more."
Ms Badenoch's expected announcement came as Suella Braverman shockingly announced that she will not run for the leadership.
Former Home Secretary Ms Braverman claimed she had received the backing of the 10 Tory MPs she needed to stand - but decided not to.
"Although I'm grateful to the 10 MPs who wanted to nominate me for the leadership, getting on to the ballot is not enough.
"There is, for good or for ill, no point in someone like me running to lead the Tory Party when most of the MPs disagree with my diagnosis and prescription" of what went wrong and how to fix it, she wrote in an article for The Telegraph.
She said the party's disastrous election result was down to failures on migration, taxes and "transgender ideology".
She added: "I've been branded mad, bad and dangerous enough to see that the Tory Party does not want to hear this. And so I will bow out here."
