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The Conservative Party’s leadership race has come down to two final candidates, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, after James Cleverly was knocked out in the fourth round of voting. The surprise outcome left some gasping, as Cleverly had given a well-received speech at the party conference last week and topped the ballot of MPs in the third round of voting only two days earlier. However, he fell behind Badenoch, who received 42 votes, and Jenrick, who received 41, in the fourth round.
The two remaining candidates will now be put to a vote by Conservative Party members, with the result due on November 2nd. Following the result, both Badenoch and Jenrick praised Cleverly and suggested that they could offer him a position in their shadow cabinet if they should win the overall race. Cleverly, in a social media message, thanked his supporters for their backing and expressed a desire for the party to unite against the “catastrophic Labour government.”
Badenoch and Jenrick have been seen as appealing to the right of the party, while Cleverly represented those nearer the center-ground. Badenoch is known for articulating uncomfortable truths, while Jenrick is praised by his backers for his stance on immigration and his resignation from his ministerial job. Jenrick made leaving the European Convention on Human Rights a key part of his campaign, but Badenoch stated that focusing too heavily on that topic would “shut down the conversation that we need to have with the entire country.”
Former home secretary Priti Patel was the first to be knocked out of the race, followed by shadow pensions secretary Mel Stride and then shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat. The eventual winner will replace Rishi Sunak as leader of the Conservative Party, after he resigned following the party’s general election defeat earlier this year. Conservative MPs have been whittling down the candidate list in a series of votes since September
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