The race to lead Britain’s vanquished Conservative Party narrowed to two finalists on Wednesday, as the party’s lawmakers in a surprise twist set up a clash between two right-wing candidates.
After four knockout rounds of voting, the lawmakers left two finalists standing: Kemi Badenoch, a favorite of the right who has said the party needs to fight against “nasty identity politics,” and Robert Jenrick, a rival hard-liner who has appealed to the right by promising to slash annual immigration numbers.
The choice of two right-wing candidates was completely unexpected, provoking gasps in the room when the vote totals were announced on Wednesday.
James Cleverly, a centrist who was buoyed by a well-received performance at the party’s recent conference, had surged to the front of the pack in the most recent vote by the party’s lawmakers. But he was unexpectedly eliminated on Wednesday.
Whoever wins will face a prolonged, painful job of rebuilding a party that suffered the worst electoral defeat of its modern history in July — losing voters not just to the victorious Labour Party but also to a hard-right anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., and the more centrist Liberal Democrats.
The new leader will be selected in the next few weeks by the party’s dues-paying members, who number fewer than 170,000 and are generally older, wealthier and less ethnically diverse than the broader British population. The result of the vote is set to be announced on Nov. 2.
Mr. Jenrick and Ms. Badenoch are vying to replace Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister, who has stayed in a caretaker capacity since July’s general election. He has not endorsed a candidate to succeed him.
The choice presents an early road map for how the Tories plan to set about rebuilding the party. Both candidates would hope to seek to nail down the right to prevent a further loss of voters to Reform, which is led by Nigel Farage, the veteran political insurgent and ally of Donald J. Trump.
In the final knockout round of voting, Ms. Badenoch won with 42 votes ahead of Mr. Jenrick, who secured 41. That edged Mr. Cleverly, who had 37 votes, out of the contest. Another candidate seen as a centrist, Tom Tugendhat, was eliminated in an earlier round of voting on Tuesday.
While the contest has been lively and lifted the spirits of party members, the long-term outlook for the Tories remains bleak. They have only 121 seats in the House of Commons, compared with 403 for Labour, and their path back to power is complicated by the rise of Reform. Mr. Farage has seized on immigration, which the Conservatives were judged to have handled poorly during their 14 years in government.
For Tories, the only consolation since their defeat has been the rocky debut of the Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Mr. Starmer has been hobbled by internal feuding, which led this past week to the departure of his chief of staff, Sue Gray, as well as by disclosures that he and his wife, as well as other senior Labour figures, accepted freebies from party donors.
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