The 2024 Conservative Party leadership election was announced on 5 July 2024 when then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declared his intention to resign as Conservative Party leader following the party's defeat at the 2024 general election. The leadership contest began on 24 July and ended on 31 October. On 2 November, Kemi Badenoch was announced as the winner of the members' ballot.
Six candidates stood for the leadership: Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat. Four were eliminated in a series of votes, until two remained to stand in the final ballot, which Conservative Party members voted in. On 4 September, Patel was eliminated in the first round of voting, with Jenrick outperforming expectations by coming first. On 10 September, Stride was eliminated in the second round and went on to endorse Cleverly.
Following a strong performance at the Conservative Party Conference, Cleverly emerged as a frontrunner by coming first in the third round of voting, whilst Tugendhat was eliminated. Despite this, Cleverly was eliminated in a close fourth round of voting, leaving Badenoch and Jenrick to go head-to-head in a members' vote.
Badenoch won the head-to-head and was elected Conservative leader on 2 November 2024. She appointed Stride, Patel, Jenrick and later Cleverly and Tugendhat to her shadow cabinet, although Patel and Cleverly stood down August 2026 in order to become Conservative Party International Secretary and run for Mayor of London respectively.
In January 2026, Jenrick defected to Reform UK.
Background
July 2022 leadership election and Liz Truss's premiership
On 7 July 2022, Boris Johnson resigned as Conservative leader and Prime Minister after dozens of ministers resigned from his government following a slew of scandals and controversies, including Partygate, that marred the final few months of his premiership, culminating in the Chris Pincher scandal. A leadership election was triggered to replace him, in which Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss were the final two candidates to be put forward to party members after a series of MPs' ballots. Truss won the contest, beating Sunak in the members' vote 57% to 43%. She assumed leadership of the party on 5 September 2022, and became Prime Minister the following day.
Truss's premiership would turn out to be the shortest of any Prime Minister in history, lasting just 49 days. Truss's tenure oversaw the death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, which caused government business to be suspended during the 10-day national mourning period from 8–19 September. On 23 September 2022, in response to the cost-of-living crisis, Truss's Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced a 'mini-budget', which introduced large-scale tax cuts and borrowing. It caused the value of pound sterling to crash, sliding to an all-time low against the US dollar. The mini-budget was widely criticised and its policies were gradually reversed over the following three weeks. The Conservatives' opinion poll ratings also began to fall sharply in the weeks following the announcement, dipping to around 20% as they trailed Labour by over 30% in some polls.
Truss dismissed Kwarteng without explanation on 14 October 2022 and replaced him with Jeremy Hunt. By 17 October, pressure was beginning to mount on Truss's premiership and five Conservative MPs were calling for her resignation. On 19 October, Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned after admitting to having used her personal email address to send a Cabinet document and her resignation letter was highly critical of Truss's government. Later that evening, a parliamentary vote on a debate to ban fracking — which was opposed by the government — descended into chaos over confusion whether it was being treated as a confidence vote in the government, compounded by speculation that the chief whip and deputy chief whip had resigned, and by allegations, later refuted, that some Conservative MPs had been manhandled in the division lobby. On 20 October, the following day, Truss announced she would resign as Prime Minister and Conservative leader shortly, triggering a second leadership election to find her replacement.
October 2022 leadership election and Rishi Sunak's premiership
The timetable for the October 2022 leadership election was much shorter than the July one. An expedited process was set out; candidates were required to obtain 100 nominations from fellow Conservative MPs before 2 pm on 24 October, and an MPs' ballot followed by an online members' ballot was to be held shortly thereafter if more than one candidate received more than 100 nominations. Only two candidates announced their intention to stand: Sunak and Penny Mordaunt. There was intensive speculation that Johnson would initiate a bid for a return to the top post; at one point he was expected to stand and even received 62 nominations from MPs, but he subsequently declined to enter the contest.
As only Sunak met the required threshold among MPs, receiving 197 nominations to Mordaunt's 27, Mordaunt withdrew from the leadership contest two minutes before nominations closed and Sunak was left the only candidate remaining, enabling him to win the contest and become Conservative leader without an MPs' ballot or members' vote. Sunak became Prime Minister the next day, on 25 October.
In his first speech as Prime Minister, Sunak said that Truss "was not wrong" to want to improve growth and that he "admired her restlessness to create change", but admitted that "some mistakes were made", and that he was elected prime minister in part to fix them. He promised to "place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government's agenda". In an almost immediate reversal of Truss's policy, Sunak reinstated the ban on fracking on 26 October 2022 as outlined in the 2019 Conservative manifesto.
Sunak was faced with the task of rebuilding the Conservatives' reputation which had been significantly damaged by the controversies and scandals of the previous year and the Truss ministry. While their poll ratings recovered slightly over the following months, it still wasn't enough to bring them back to pre-Truss levels. Sunak contested his first local elections as leader on 4 May 2023, where the Conservatives suffered heavy losses. Two months later, on 20 July 2023, they lost two seats in by-elections; one to Labour and one to the Liberal Democrats. Their fortunes remained unchanged throughout policy changes of the following year, such as the shelving of the HS2 northern phase in October. The Conservatives lost two further seats in by-elections on 15 February 2024.
In March 2024, there were suggestions that Sunak could face a leadership challenge before the upcoming general election — which was expected within the calendar year — if the Conservatives perform poorly at the local elections on 2 May. Sunak however said he would resist a challenge, even if that ends up being the case. As predicted, 2 May saw grim showing for the Conservatives, who suffered their worst local election results since 1996. Additionally, they lost another seat to Labour in the Blackpool South by-election, and narrowly lost the West Midlands mayoral election in a knife-edge vote. Sunak's premiership was described as more stable than that of his two predecessors, while still not being able to represent a turnaround for the Conservatives.
2024 general election
On 22 May 2024, in a surprise announcement, Sunak called a general election for 4 July.
Labour won the general election in a landslide, ending 14 years of Conservative government. Sunak conceded the election at 4:40 am on 5 July. The Conservatives experienced the largest defeat in its history, being reduced to 121 seats on a vote share of 23.7 per cent. It lost 244 seats, including those of twelve Cabinet ministers and that of former Prime Minister Truss. It also lost all its seats in Wales.
Subsequently, Sunak said in his final speech as Prime Minister that he would resign as leader of the party once a successor was elected.
Campaign
In early July, shortly after the general election, reports suggested that Danny Kruger and John Hayes, prominent MPs on the right of the party, were going to support the prospective leadership candidate Robert Jenrick. This was seen as an early setback for Suella Braverman, since both Kruger and Hayes previously campaigned for her bid to succeed Boris Johnson in July 2022. The i reported that following Braverman's controversial speeches regarding the pride flag, multiple Conservative MPs believed she had lost her support among her colleagues and could defect to Reform UK. Sources in both parties suggested Braverman was expected to defect, potentially following the Conservative leadership election if she doesn't win. Braverman did not stand, but said she could have surpassed the ten MP threshold to do so.
James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Robert Jenrick, Mel Stride, Priti Patel and Kemi Badenoch were the confirmed candidates at the deadline of nominations on 29 July. Tugendhat and Cleverly were pitching themselves as more moderate, centre-ground candidates, while Badenoch, Jenrick and Patel were competing for the vote of the party's right-wing, and Stride is seen as being between the two groupings.
Bob Blackman, 1922 Committee chair, announced that he would give out formal warnings, or "yellow cards", if they briefed against their rivals.
Ipsos reported that there was widespread apathy around the election, with 62% of people saying that they did not personally care who became the leader.
Cleverly's elimination in the final MPs' ballot surprised many. It was speculated that some of Cleverly's supporters had voted for other candidates, presuming Cleverly would be safe, in order to pick an easier rival against him in the members' vote, i.e. a failure of tactical voting.
On 17 October, GB News hosted Decision Time: The Race to Lead, the only major programme to feature the final two contenders, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, after negotiations between their camps for the BBC to host a similar programme broke down. The two-hour programme, hosted by Christopher Hope, saw the candidates separately answer questions from a Conservative-voting audience. It drew a peak audience of 152,600.
As of the end of the campaign, Jenrick raised £480,000 towards his campaign, while Badenoch raised £422,500.
Schedule
The elected chair of the 1922 Committee, Bob Blackman, suggested prior to the election that the party must take its time in choosing a leader. Following the election, he said that he expected Sunak would not be the leader by the Conservative Party Conference, which was held at the end of September.
The 1922 Committee met to decide the schedule of the election on the 22 July. The leadership race is expected to last for a little over three months with Sunak's successor being confirmed on 2 November. The timetable of key dates is in the table below. Conservative Party Conference will act as a 'beauty parade' for the remaining candidates.
In addition to the voting timetable below, the Conservatives "pay to play" rules required the final four candidates, as decided by Conservative MPs on 10 September, to pay £50,000 to CCHQ.
Following the last round of MPs voting, the final two candidates were required to pay another £150,000 to the central party headquarters.
Candidates
In June 2024, during the campaign for the 2024 general election, The Guardian reported that leadership hopefuls were already lobbying for support from MP candidates for a potential upcoming leadership election, which was seen as likely given that opinion polls showed the Conservatives on course for a heavy defeat. The Times also reported that both Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch registered website domains for a leadership campaign. As Mordaunt lost her seat in the general election, her prospective campaign never came to fruition; the Conservative Party constitution states that the leader of the party must be a Member of Parliament. Despite press speculation that former leader Boris Johnson might make another attempt to return to the position, this requirement likewise prevented him from doing so, as Johnson had not been an MP since June 2023.
Candidates who declared
The following candidates declared leadership campaigns.
Explored
The following Conservative Party politicians explored standing but ultimately declined to stand or failed to receive the ten required nominations:
- Victoria Atkins, Shadow Health Secretary (2024–present), Health Secretary (2023–2024), MP for Louth and Horncastle (2015–present) (endorsed Jenrick)
- Suella Braverman, Home Secretary (2022, 2022–2023), Attorney General (2020–2022), MP for Fareham and Waterlooville (2024–present); Fareham (2015–2024) (endorsed Jenrick)
- Kevin Hollinrake, Shadow Business Secretary (2024–present), MP for Thirsk and Malton (2015–present) (endorsed Badenoch)
Potential candidates prior to the election
The following figures lost their seats in the 2024 general election and were ineligible to stand, but were discussed as potential candidates prior to electoral results.