The former leader of the party, Boris Johnson, announced his departure on Thursday, after high-ranking representatives of his government and his party demanded his resignation due to a series of internal political scandals in the past months, MTI reported.
With his departure, Johnson will also cease to serve as Prime Minister, but the Prime Minister has announced that he will perform his duties until his successor is elected.
Bookmakers, pollsters, British newspapers and political analysts are the clear candidates in the race for succession. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has been detained.
But Wallace announced in a Twitter post on Saturday that after careful consideration and discussions with colleagues and his family, he has decided not to join the race for the Conservative Party leader.
Wallace admits it wasn’t an easy decision, but he said he wanted to focus on his current job, and keeping the country safe.
Until Saturday’s announcement, all polls showed that had he run, Wallace would have been the most likely and most popular candidate in the field.
Britain’s largest polling institute, YouGov, showed in its national poll conducted after the prime minister’s resignation was announced, that by modeling different potential pairs, Wallace would have emerged victorious in any event, with a significant voting advantage.
As of Saturday, four people have officially indicated that they are applying for the position of Conservative Party leader.
The most famous of them was Rishi Sunak, the finance minister, who along with former health minister Sajid Javid resigned this week in protest of the scandals surrounding Johnson. The two ministers’ departures started an almost unprecedented wave of resignations within the British government, eventually forcing Boris Johnson to announce his departure as well.
Not so long ago, the 42-year-old was seen as the favourite in speculation about the next leader of the Conservative Party, but the same scandals that undermined Johnson’s popularity have also undermined his support.
London police – like Johnson – have fined him for violating restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
Additionally, in recent weeks, there have also been press reports that Sunak’s Indian wife, a wealthy equity investor, has taken a legal opportunity to avoid paying income tax in Great Britain on the returns on her foreign investments in recent years.
Former Minister of State for Equal Opportunities Kimi Badenouch announced her intention to run on Saturday, and the day before, Suella Braverman, the British government’s chief legal adviser, Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons in London and one of them. One of the most influential representatives of the Conservative Party has also announced that they will be running a leadership race.
Based on the current regulations, after the formation of the field, the conservative faction in the House of Commons will begin a series of votes on the candidates. Of the final candidates standing at the end of the process – if neither withdraws in favor of the other – the 160,000 registered Conservative Party members can choose the party’s new leader, who will also be the UK’s next prime minister, by postal vote.
