The race to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister had already turned sour on Saturday as Conservative factions took on Rishi Sunak, the early front-runner, while a senior MP urged the “hopeless” candidates to drop out.
With four candidates confirmed but predictions that as many as 15 could emerge as the next Conservative leader, Tory MPs have expressed concern about the potential timetable for the race and the prospect of fierce battles.
Sunak, the former chancellor, who entered the race on Friday night with an elegantly edited video campaign message posted on Twitter under the slogan “Ready for Rishi”, is seen as one of the likely front-runners.
But he has already faced criticism among fellow lawmakers for indicating he would focus more on fiscal prudence than immediate tax cuts, with his video taking aim at other candidates who might offer “comfort tales” and not economic truths.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a key Johnson loyalist, said on Friday night he could not support Sunak, whose resignation as chancellor helped precipitate a loss of faith in the prime minister that led him to resign as Tory leader on Thursday.
“We’ve had a high-tax chancellor and I belong to a low-tax party and I want to go back to the low-tax party,” Rees-Mogg, the Brexit options minister, told BBC Radio 4’s All Questions.
Sunak has also been affected by the start of what is likely to be a wave of anonymous briefings from Johnson’s Downing Street, where his role in the prime minister’s departure has sparked considerable anger.
A senior Number 10 official was quoted in the Financial Times as calling Sunak a “conniving bastard”, while a Johnson cabinet supporter told the newspaper: “Rishi will get everything he deserves for leading the charge to bring down the Prime Minister”.
So far, the only confirmed candidates are Sunak, senior backbench MP Tom Tugendhat, Attorney General Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch, who was joint promotion and equalities minister until she resigned last week.
In a Times article announcing her candidacy, Badenoch indicated she would focus heavily on culture war issues, an area that also defines much of her ministerial approach, saying she hoped to tackle “identity politics with zero sum we see today’.
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Steve Baker, another libertarian right-wing Tory MP who indicated he might enter the race himself, has now backed Braverman.
A number of other candidates are expected to announce soon, including Ben Wallace, the defense secretary; Liz Truss, Foreign Secretary; Sajid Javid, who resigned as health secretary last week; Nadhim Zahawi, who replaced Sunak as chancellor; and Penny Mordaunt, former Defense Secretary.
A number of other MPs indicated they might, including Nadine Dorries, the culture minister, and Rehman Chishti, who, less than a day after landing his first ministerial role at the Foreign Office after 12 years in parliament, said he was “actively considering” running.
Sir Charles Walker, former chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, which will set the detailed rules for the contest, said he hoped the early stages of the race would not be too brutal.
“Obviously it’s the duty of the candidates, however many there are, not to knock each other,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today.
“I hope that some of the candidates who know they have no hope of leading our party and becoming Prime Minister will really decide to stand down for good.”
Under party rules, the field is whittled down to the final two by back-to-back votes among Tory MPs, with the final pair then put to a vote by Conservative members.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the Committee since 1922, told Times Radio that it was possible that the threshold for nominations needed to enter the race, and then the minimum number of MPs needed to get through each round, could be raised , to speed up the process.
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