Tory leadership live: Badenoch wins as poll shows Conservative party membership numbers at lowest ever

Rishi Sunak has revealed his plans once he steps down as leader of the Conservative Party, playing down suggestions that he would be leaving Westminster for California.

Earlier this week, the former prime minister told MPs that he would be spending more time in the “greatest place on earth”.

“If anyone needs me, I will be in Yorkshire,” he told Prime Minister’s Questions.

There was speculation earlier this year that the Richmond and Northallerton MP – who previously worked at a hedge fund in California – could be in line for a job in Silicon Valley.

“Today is my last appearance at PMQs and I’m happy to confirm reports that I will now be spending more time in the greatest place on earth where the scenery is indeed worthy of a movie set, and everyone is a character,” he said.

“That’s right, if anyone needs me, I will be in Yorkshire.”

The contest was triggered after Rishi Sunak announced he would step aside in the wake of the Conservative party’s election defeat in the summer.

The Conservatives returned MPs in 121 seats at the July poll, down hundreds on their 2019 result, having secured less than 25 per cent of the vote nationally.

Speaking on Downing Street the morning after the election, Mr Sunak apologised to the country and his party.

“To the country, I would like to say first and foremost, I am sorry,” he said.

“I have given this job my all, but you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change.

“And yours is the only judgment that matters.

“I have heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss.”

Speaking ahead of Saturday’s result, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said the contest has shown the Conservatives are “refusing to take responsibility for the damage they did to the country”.

She said: “Whoever wins the Conservative Party leadership contest will have to carry the can for years of failure that tanked the economy and left the NHS on its knees.”

Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch have been travelling up and down the country in their attempts to secure member support in the weeks since the final MP ballot.

At the start of the campaign, Ms Badenoch wrote in The Telegraph that the party “need to get back to first principles” and has been light on the details of specific policies she would enact.

Amid the events and speeches, Mr Jenrick criticised his opponent for offering up what he called “a promise of a plan” rather than more concrete policies.

He told the BBC’s Westminster Hour in October that “I think it’s disrespectful to the members and the public to ask for their votes without saying where you stand on the big issues facing our country today”.

Mr Jenrick added: “A plan today is what I offer. A promise of a plan at some point in the future is what my opponent offers, and I don’t think that’s the way to rebuild the public’s trust and confidence in us.”

“Tory” is a dirty word and the Conservative Party should stop using it, election guru Sir Lynton Crosby has said.

The long-standing election strategist, who has been behind two decades of Conservative election campaigns, said Tory has become “a pejorative term”.

Ahead of the election of Rishi Sunak’s successor on Saturday, Mr Crosby said: “They ought to call themselves Conservatives and not abbreviate it to Tories. I think ‘Tory’ has become a pejorative term … Labour would never call themselves the Socialists.”

He added: “I’d focus on reward for effort, aspiration, personal responsibility, national unity … I would focus on those five or six values.”

And he told The Australian that whoever wins will need a new approach and should aim to establish a “values differential” to set them apart from other parties.

Mr Crosby’s intervention comes ahead of the announcement of the new Tory leader, as the four-month battle to replace the former PM comes to a close.

The Conservative Party will appoint a new leader to replace Rishi Sunak this morning.

The final two candidates, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, were picked by the parliamentary party but the new leader is chosen through an online ballot of Conservative Party members that closed on 31 October.

The Tory leadership announcement process is set to begin at around 11am.

Conservative Party chairman Richard Fuller will give an introduction, before the result is announced by the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs Bob Blackman.

Then, we will hear a speech from whoever is the new Tory leader.

So bland, cautious and moderate was the former immigration minister turned rightwing leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick when he entered the Commons that he was nicknamed “Robert Generic”.

Yet now 10 years on from winning the Newark by-election as a centrist, he has reached the final two of the 2024 Conservative Party leadership campaign in a battle against Kemi Badenoch to become the champion of the Tory hard-right - but it all was very different when he was first elected.

So far has Mr Jenrick travelled from his original centrist position that he has not only openly supported Donald Trump winning the US presidential election but also adopted the shock tactics so beloved of the Republican candidate and former president. Nothing better illustrated that than when he recently went jogging in London with a highly provocative “Hamas are terrorists” T-shirt.

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Kemi Badenoch is the woman who always wanted to wear Margaret Thatcher’s “trousers”. As a child growing up in Nigeria’s patriarchal society, she saw Thatcher as her heroine; a self-made woman of power who was outspoken and uncompromising in her conviction.

“Whenever I was told I couldn’t do something because I was a girl, I would just say two words: Margaret Thatcher. And there was nothing they could say in response to that” says Badenoch. “She was inspirational.” Unbeknown at the time, the young Nigerian schoolgirl would not only go on to sit at the cabinet table where Thatcher ran Britain for over 11 years but would, today, be in the final moments of a battle to become the next leader of the Conservative and Unionist party.

The Tory party has been looking for a new Margaret Thatcher since it got rid of the last one. The hopes that Theresa May and Liz Truss would fit the bill came to nothing, but in Badenoch, they see a woman who, like Thatcher, is a leader who is willing to say what other politicians won’t.

Jane Preston writes:

Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick will be crowned as the new Conservative Party leader on Saturday, as the four-month-long race to replace Rishi Sunak reaches the finish line.

The result of the leadership ballot is expected to be announced late in the morning, with the members’ ballot having closed on Thursday.

The winner will be at the helm as the party looks to recover from the July election result which saw it return just 121 MPs.

After the close of polls on Thursday, both candidates thanked their backers for their support through the contest.

Ms Badenoch described the party as a “family” and said that it is “much more to me than a membership organisation”.

Mr Jenrick also called for the party to “move past the drama” of recent years and “unite”.

“Together we can put an end to the excuses, move past the drama, and unite our party,” he wrote on X.

Immigration, the economy, and how the Conservatives can rebuild trust with the electorate and win back voters they lost at the election have all been discussed at length through the campaign.

The party lost seats to Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK in the July poll.

Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly also put their names forward in the nominations at the end of July and spent the summer campaigning before they were each knocked out of the contest.