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The next Conservative Party leadership election will take place in the future to determine Boris Johnson's successor as leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Background

2019 leadership election

David Cameron resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2016 following the result of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, which was for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (EU). The subsequent leadership election had been expected to be between Theresa May, who had been the home secretary since 2010, and Boris Johnson, a writer who had served as mayor of London from 2008 until earlier in 2016. Michael Gove, who had been expected to support Johnson, announced his own leadership campaign, citing doubts about Johnson. Johnson withdrew from the election, which was eventually won by May.

As prime minister, May began to negoiate a withdrawal agreement with the EU. After triggering Article 50, a legal process that started the UK's formal departure from the EU, she called an early general election, aiming to secure a larger Conservative majority to support her proposals for Brexit. However, the result of the election was a hung parliament, with the Conservatives losing their majority. In order to continue governing, May negotiated a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party. In December 2018, the Conservative Party triggered a vote of no confidence in May. She told Conservative MPs that she would resign after the UK's withdrawal from the EU, and before the next election. She survived the vote with 200 Conservative MPs voting for confidence and 117 voting for no confidence. The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called a vote of no confidence against May in the House of Commons, which she survived by 325 votes to 306. May was unable to pass her Brexit withdrawal agreement through several Parliamentary votes, and announced her resignation in May 2019.

Ten MPs were nominated in the 2019 leadership election, and they went through sequential ballots of Conservative MPs until two candidates remained: the foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, and Johnson, who had served as foreign secretary under May before resigning from her cabinet. Hunt and Johnson went to a vote by Conservative Party members, which saw Johnson elected with 66.4% of the vote to Hunt's 33.6%.

2019 general election

As prime minister, Johnson initially had a majority of a single vote. He lost this when the Conservative MP Phillip Lee crossed the floor on 3 September 2019 to join the Liberal Democrats, accusing Johnson's government of "aggressively pursuing a damaging Brexit in unprincipled ways". Twenty-one Conservative MPs voted to allow the House of Commons to consider a bill tabled by the Labour MP Hilary Benn that would require Johnson to seek an extension to date of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union from 31 October 2019 to 31 January 2020 if Parliament had not approved a withdrawal agreement or voted to allow the UK to leave the EU without a deal. Johnson removed the whip from the twenty-one MPs in what The Daily Telegraph described as "one of the biggest parliamentary bloodbaths in history". Shortly after, Amber Rudd resigned from Johnson's cabinet and left the Conservative Party in protest, and Johnson's brother Jo Johnson resigned as a minister and announced that he'd stand down as an MP.

Johnson sought an early general election, but was initially unsuccessful as a majority of MPs wanted to remove the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a deal. After Benn's bill became law despite Johnson's opposition, he agreed an extension to the UK's withdrawal date and negotiated revisions to the withdrawal agreement. He went on to put forward the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019, which passed and resulted in the 2019 general election. The Conservative Party won a majority of eighty, with 365 seats. They gained seats in the north of England that had been held by the Labour Party for decades. Five of the MPs Johnson suspended unsuccessfully stood in the election as independent or Liberal Democrat candidates.

Partygate scandal

From December 2021, the media reported that there had been social gatherings by Conservative Party and UK government staff during public health restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These included an occasion in which Johnson and his wife were pictured with seventeen staff members having cheese and wine in the garden of 10 Downing Street during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom, which a spokesperson later said was a work meeting. Johnson admitted attending "socially distanced drinks" organised by Martin Reynolds, Johnson's principal private secretary, also during the same lockdown. Johnson said he thought it was a work meeting, while Dominic Cummings, who was an adviser to Johnson at the time, said that he had warned the prime minister against it. A leaving event for James Slack, who had served as director of communications before leaving to become deputy editor of The Sun, was held the day before the funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. An inquiry into the allegations was begun by the cabinet secretary Simon Case, but after it was reported that his own office had held a party in December 2020, the inquiry was passed to Sue Gray, another senior civil servant.

There was negative reaction against Johnson from Conservative MPs, with some calling for him to resign. Johnson said "nobody said this was something that was against the rules" and that he took "full responsibility for what took place".

Conservative Party rules mean that a confidence vote is triggered by 15% of MPs sending letters to the chair of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady. There were reports that the threshold would be reached imminently in January 2022. The Guardian reported that several Conservative MPs were waiting until Gray's report into the alleged parties before deciding whether to send letters to Brady. The Conservative MP Christian Wakeford defected to the Labour Party on 19 January 2022, saying that Johnson and the Conservative Party were "incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves". The New Statesman reported that some Conservative MPs were delaying sending letters to Brady after Wakeford's defection demonstrated that division in the Conservative Party benefitted Labour. Around the same time, the Conservative MP William Wragg said that his party's whips were using blackmail and threats of withdrawing funding in MPs' constituencies in order to secure their votes. Another Conservative MP, Nus Ghani, said that a whip had told her that her Muslimness was discussed when deciding to fire her from her ministerial role in 2020. Wragg and Ghani were both vice-chairs of the 1922 Committee, which was said to be considering reducing the period after an unsuccessful vote of no confidence before which a new vote could be triggered from twelve months to six months. The Times reported these as all being serious threats to Johnson being able to remain in his position.

Conservative MPs who have publicly announced submitting a letter to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee

#	MP		Constituency	Other offices	Announced	Comments
2021
1		Sir Roger Gale	North Thanet		17 December	"I put in a letter to Sir Graham Brady after the Barnard Castle incident, because that gave a message to me that this was not the kind of leadership that I believe the Conservative Party needed".
2022
2		Douglas Ross	Moray	Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party	12 January	"Regretfully, I have to say that position is no longer tenable".
3		Andrew Bridgen	North West Leicestershire		13 January	"Claims by that he did not know that he was attending a party seem at best misguided and at worst cynical".
4		Peter Aldous	Waveney		1 February	"I believe that this is in the best interests of the country, the Government and the Conservative Party".
5		Tobias Ellwood	Bournemouth East	Chair of the Defence Select Committee	2 February	"This is all only going one way and will invariably slide towards a very ugly place".
6		Anthony Mangnall	Totnes		2 February	" actions and mistruths are overshadowing the extraordinary work of so many excellent ministers and colleagues".
7		Sir Gary Streeter	South West Devon		2 February	"I cannot reconcile the pain and sacrifice of the vast majority of the British public during lockdown with the attitude and activities of those working in Downing Street".
8		Aaron Bell	Newcastle-under-Lyme		4 February	"The breach of trust that the events in Downing Street represent, and the manner in which they have been handled, makes position untenable".

Procedure

The principles of the procedure for selecting the leader of the Conservative Party are set in the party's constitution, while the detailed rules are agreed by the 1922 Committee executive in consultation with the Conservative Party Board. Nominations for the leadership are invited by the chair of the 1922 Committee, who acts as returning officer. When nominations close, a list of valid nominations is published. If there is only one valid nomination, that person is elected. If two valid nominations are received, both names go forward to the party membership.

Candidates

Publicly expressed interest

• Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee

• MP for Tonbridge and Malling
  Tom Tugendhat
  from Kent

Potential

The following Conservative Party politicians have been speculated about by the media as potential candidates in the next Conservative Party leadership election:

• Steve Baker, former chair of the European Research Group
• Matt Hancock, former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
• Mark Harper, MP for Forest of Dean
• Jeremy Hunt, former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
• Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
• Esther McVey, former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
• Penny Mordaunt, Minister of State for Trade Policy
• Priti Patel, Home Secretary
• Dominic Raab, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Secretary of State for Justice
• Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer
• Liz Truss, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
• Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of State for Education

• MP for Wycombe
  Steve Baker
  from Buckinghamshire
• MP for West Suffolk
  Matt Hancock
  from Suffolk
• MP for Forest of Dean
  Mark Harper
  from Gloucestershire
• MP for South West Surrey
  Jeremy Hunt
  from Surrey
• MP for Bromsgrove
  Sajid Javid
  from Worcestershire
• MP for Tatton
  Esther McVey
  from Cheshire
• MP for Portsmouth North
  Penny Mordaunt
  from Hampshire
• MP for Witham
  Priti Patel
  from Essex
• MP for Esher and Walton
  Dominic Raab
  from Surrey
• MP for Richmond (Yorks)
  Rishi Sunak
  from North Yorkshire
• MP for South West Norfolk
  Liz Truss
  from Norfolk
• MP for Stratford-on-Avon
  Nadhim Zahawi
  from Warwickshire

Declined

• Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

Opinion polling

Party members

Nominations

The polling company Opinium Research asked Conservative Party members to select which one or two potential candidates they wanted MPs to put forward to a members' vote.

Head-to-head

Polling firms have asked Conservative party members which candidate they would vote for under various head-to-head scenarios.

References

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14. Mikhailova, Anna (2019-09-04). "Boris Johnson to strip 21 Tory MPs of the Tory whip in parliamentary bloodbath". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
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25. "Covid: Ex No 10 staff member sorry for lockdown leaving party". BBC News. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
26. "Sue Gray report: When is inquiry due, what does it mean for Boris Johnson and who decides what happens next?". Sky News. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
27. Culbertson, Alix (2022-01-19). "Boris Johnson says 'nobody told me' Number 10 lockdown garden party was against the rules". Sky News.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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29. "About a dozen Tory MPs said to have accused party whips of blackmail". the Guardian. 2022-01-22. Retrieved 2022-01-22.
30. "Tory MP Christian Wakeford defects to Labour". BBC News. 2022-01-19. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
31. "Why Tory MPs have given Boris Johnson a stay of execution". New Statesman. 2022-01-19. Retrieved 2022-01-19.
32. "About a dozen Tory MPs said to have accused party whips of blackmail". the Guardian. 2022-01-22. Retrieved 2022-01-24.
33. Pogrund, Caroline Wheeler, Rosamund Urwin and Gabriel. "Nusrat Ghani: I was sacked as a minister 'because I was a Muslim'". ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2022-01-24.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
34. Correspondent, Henry Zeffman, Chief Political. "Boris Johnson survival: Grenades are going off everywhere — but will any prove fatal?". ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2022-01-24. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
35. Richard Mason (17 December 2021). "Boris Johnson: Roger Gale confirms sending letter of no confidence". The National.
36. McDonald, Andrew (12 January 2022). "Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross urges Boris Johnson to quit over lockdown party". Politico. Retrieved 20 January 2022.
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