Tory leadership race – live: Priti Patel ‘to run’ amid calls for Sunak to stay on until November

Priti Patel is reportedly making a bid to become the Conservative Party leader after being “urged to run” by her colleagues.

The former home secretary is expected to make a formal announcement later this week, The Telegraph reported, adding that she has already assembled a campaign team funded by “high-profile” Tory donors.

A source close to her told the paper: “Priti has kept a low profile and done her best to support others, she feels colleagues also need time to digest the general election result and don’t want posturing in the media from prospective candidates.

“She has quietly put a team together, as many colleagues from different sides of the party have over the past week urged her to run and she now has key MP supporters and campaign staff in place including some high profile Conservative donors.”

The Telegraph reported that unlike her fellow right-wing MP, Suella Braverman, her colleagues believe Ms Patel has the ability to unite the party as they pick up the pieces from their general election defeat.

Sir Mohamed Mansour, the senior treasurer of the Conservative Party, announced on Saturday he was resigning from his post 10 days after Rishi Sunak’s election defeat.

The Egyptian-born billionaire had donated £5m to the party and had been a key player in raising other funds. His donation was the biggest for the Conservatives since 2001.

He told The Independent: “I have been honoured to serve my country and party since December 2022 and it has been a privilege to do so.

“Rishi Sunak has announced his intention to depart as party leader, and it makes sense for me to also step down at this time. A new leadership team will bring fresh talent and thinking to the task ahead: guiding the party on its path of renewal.”

The Conservatives received £50,000 in the dying days of the election campaign from a company linked to a billionaire who has been jailed for exploiting his domestic staff, Electoral Commission figures show.

Figures published on Monday show Westminster Development Services, a consortium responsible for redeveloping the Old War Office on Whitehall into a Raffles hotel, made the donation to the Tories on July 1.

According to Companies House, Westminster Development Services is up to 50% owned by AMC Project Services, which itself lists Prakash Hinduja, the chairman of the Hinduja Group and one of Britain’s richest men, as its owner.

Some 10 days earlier, on June 21, Hinduja and three members of his family had been jailed by a Swiss court after being convicted of exploiting domestic workers at their mansion in Geneva.

Christopher McKeon has the full report:

Tom Tugendhat – who came fifth in the race to succed Boris Johnson in 2022 – has found widespread report for a Tory leadership bid and is expected to announce his campaign within weeks, a new report claims.

A campaign team established by the shadow security minister and comprising current and former Tory MPs has been impressed to discover a broad base of goodwill from across the party during initial soundings among MP colleagues, The Telegraph reports.

“There is an early embryonic organisation, taking soundings about who would support him,” one senior Tory told the outlet, while another insider jibed that Mr Tugendhat’s nascent campaign was “the worst kept secret in Westminster”.

Rishi Sunak was warned he was losing his grip on his own MPs after he was hit by a mass strike in the last days of his premiership.

In a sign of the pressure Mr Sunak was under before he shocked Westminster by calling a snap general election, the then prime minister was told the situation was unsustainable.

On a single day Conservative whips received a request from around 200 Tory MPs – well over half of the parliamentary party – to be slipped, or excused from voting, a former senior Downing Street insider said.

The Conservative Party needs to avoid a lurch to the “extreme right” as it tries to rebuild itself from its worst ever defeat, a former party chair has warned.

Chris Patten, who was chair for the successful 1992 general election campaign where he also lost his seat, has raised concerns that the Tories will try to ape Nigel Farage as it seeks to win back supporters.

Writing for The Independent, the Tory grandee, who was also Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, labelled two of the potential contenders Priti Patel and Suella Braverman as “extreme right” and described Farage as “Tommy Robinson in a cravat” as he urged for the party to take time over its reset.

Shadow veterans minister Andrew Bowie has said Rishi Sunak should stay on as Conservative Party leader until November.

Asked if he agreed with shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell that the former prime minister should continue to act as party leader until November, Mr Bowie told Sky News: “I think it’s important that there is some stability at the top of the Conservative Party as we determine how and the length of the leadership election that we’re about to undertake.

“And Rishi gives us that certainty, gives us that continuity, and I hope he finds within himself to carry on whilst we get our house in order and select who is to succeed him and lead us into the next election in four or five years.

He added: “Yes, from my perspective, I think he should stay.”

Asked if the party should move to the right, Mr Bowie said: “Absolutely not, I mean, that’s for the party members to decide who the leader is going to be, but I think that the Conservative Party does better when it commands the centre ground.

“That’s where we have done better traditionally, and that’s where we command most support in the country when we do so. So it’s not for me to determine where the party goes, that’s for Members of Parliament in general, and indeed, the party membership.”

Here we look at some of the remaining runners and riders:

John Woodcock, a former Labour MP, who now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Walney, also suggested there could have been a “concerted campaign by extremists”.