Priti Patel becomes fifth to declare Tory leadership bid

Dame Priti Patel has said she will stand to be Tory party leader, making her the fifth Conservative MP to throw her hat in the ring.

She joins Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader.

She wrote on Twitter: “I am standing to be the new Leader of the Conservative Party. We must unite to win!

“I can lead us in opposition and unite our party and get us match fit for the next election, with unity, experience and strength.”

She said she could deliver the “experienced and strong” leadership needed to unite the Tories’ disparate factions, in an article for The Telegraph on Saturday.

As leader she would use the “huge talent pool…of Conservative Party members” to “solve the big challenges that Labour, the Lib Dems and Reform don’t have answers to”, she wrote.

She said the party was a “grassroots movement” that should work from from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

She wrote that “rebuilding trust with an electorate who have stopped listening to us will be tough” and that the party must “reflect honestly on what went wrong” while avoiding a “soap opera of finger-pointing and self-indulgence”.

Dame Priti became an MP in 2010 and served in Cabinet positions under Theresa May and Boris Johnson, as international development secretary and home secretary respectively.

In her article she echoed language used by Mr Johnson as she wrote of turning Conservative values into “oven-ready” policies and getting the party “match fit” to win.

Mr Johnson will not endorse any candidate in the Conservative leadership contest, The Telegraph reported earlier, citing an unnamed ally of the former prime minister.

Dame Priti is a longstanding Eurosceptic and prominent figure on the right of the party.

As home secretary she launched a points-based immigration system and signed the agreement with Rwanda to send asylum seekers to the country.

She resigned as home secretary after Liz Truss became Tory leader.

Shadow communities secretary Kemi Badenoch, the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Mr Sunak, and former home secretaries Suella Braverman are expected to put themselves forward before nominations close at 2.30pm on Monday.

Contenders need a proposer, seconder and eight other backers to stand.

The parliamentary party will narrow the field down to four, who will make their case at the Conservative Party conference, which runs from September 29 to October 2.

The final two, picked by the parliamentary party, will then go to a vote of party members in an online ballot that will close on October 31 with the result announced on November 2.

Dame Priti is the least popular contender, at minus 28 points and seven points respectively, according to polling by Savanta carried out between July 19 and 21.

Mr Tugendhat is the most popular potential contender among both the public, at minus three points, and 2024 Conservative voters, at 21 points, the research shows.

Mr Cleverly is second in the running, Savanta’s findings suggest, at minus nine points with the public and 19 points among 2024 Conservative voters.