Crisis-hit Liz Truss has quit as PM after just 44 days in Downing Street.
The Prime Minister sacked her Chancellor and abandoned most of her policy agenda in a desperate bid to calm the economic turmoil triggered by her disastrous mini-Budget.
Top Tory Jeremy Hunt was parachuted in to steady the ship, immediately reversing £32billion of unfunded tax cuts and curtailing the energy price guarantee to help Brits struggling with household bills.
But, in a blistering letter to the PM, Home Secretary Suella Braverman quit and there was chaos in parliament during the crunch fracking vote.
In a 90-second statement outside Downing Street today, Liz Truss announced her resignation, saying her successor would be in place in just a week's time.
Tory backbench chief Sir Graham Brady said he expected a new leader to be in place by Friday, October 28, with a ballot of MPs and even members done in 7 days.
He told reporters: "I have spoken to the party chairman Jake Berry and he has confirmed that it will be possible to conduct a ballot and conclude a leadership election by Friday the 28th of October.
"So we should have a new leader in place before the fiscal statement which will take place on the 31st."
Here’s who’s in the frame to succeed her.
Rishi Sunak
The slick former Chancellor trailed behind Liz Truss in the Tory leadership race run-off but he will be having the last laugh after her economic plans tanked.
Mr Sunak won the support of 137 MPs compared to Ms Truss’s 113 backers - and his allies are among those being most critical of the PM.
But he would be unpopular with Ms Truss’s allies and his perceived betrayal of Boris Johnson repeatedly came up with party members.
Mr Sunak, who was previously touted on a possible joint ticket with Penny Mordaunt, is well known to the public because of his pandemic support schemes but a string of out of touch gaffes tainted his record.
The 42-year-old came under fire when it emerged his wife Askhata Murty, with whom he's 222nd on the Sunday Times Rich List with a combined £730m fortune, was paying £30,000 a year to use her non-dom status not to pay UK tax on her overseas income. She later U-turned.
Allies are suggesting he could make another bid - but there has been no announcement yet.
Penny Mordaunt
The Commons leader made it to the final three of the Tory leadership race, where she won the backing of 105 MPs.
On the moderate wing of the party but with strong Brexit credentials, she came out in support of Liz Truss once she was knocked out of the contest.
She was tipped for a joint ticket with Rishi Sunak but later came out urging people to back the embattled PM.
But her Commons performance on Monday raised eyebrows, when she said Ms Truss wasn’t “hiding under a desk” - something an experienced politician would know would grab headlines.
A former Navy reservist, Ms Mordaunt has previously served as International Development Secretary and Defence Secretary.
But she also has a sense of humour. She previously took part in a reality TV show Splash and used the word “cock” six times in a Commons debate in a game with fellow reservists.
Boris Johnson
The scandal-plagued former PM was ousted by his own MPs earlier this year but he remains a dark cloud hanging over Liz Truss’s premiership.
Mr Johnson is popular with members and still has loyal supporters in Parliament, who think he’s the party’s only chance of avoiding electoral wipeout.
His 2019 landslide win showed him to be an asset to the Tories but Partygate and his Covid record remain risks for the party. He still faces a probe into whether he misled Parliament over lockdown bashes in Downing Street - and the Covid inquiry will put further scrutiny over his handling of the pandemic.
He is said to want to focus on writing books and shoring up his finances now he’s out of No10 but unfinished business may call him back.
Suella Braverman
A former leadership contender, Ms Braverman served as Home Secretary for just 43 days before resigning on Wednesday.
The right-winger ostensibly quit after sending an official document using her personal email, which is a serious breach of ministerial rules.
But she had been on a collision course with Liz Truss over immigration rules - and the pair reportedly had a 90-minute shouting match before resigning.
Ms Braverman significantly raised her profile with the membership in the race to succeed Boris Johnson this summer and could be a candidate for the right of the party.
A former chair of the hard line European Research Group of Brexiteers, Ms Braverman quit as Brexit minister in protest at Theresa May's plans.
She made the headlines at Tory conference earlier this month when she said it was her "dream" to see flights carrying migrants depart for Rwanda - and accused warring colleagues of "staging a coup" against Ms Truss
She is known for her "anti-woke" views. On her penultimate day as Home Secretary, she went on a bizarre rant against the "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati" in the Commons.
Kemi Badenoch
The International Trade Secretary had a surprisingly successful run in the summer leadership race where she came fourth.
Popular with Tory members after vowing "limited government" and a war on “woke”, Ms Badenoch has some powerful fans - including her former boss at the Department for Levelling Up Michael Gove.
The 42-year-old MP for Saffron Walden since 2017 was born to a GP and professor in Wimbledon, though is keen to point out she had a job in McDonald's while studying for her A-levels.
She worked for the private bank Coutts and the Spectator, standing as a Tory candidate for the first time in 2010.
She was elected in 2017 and rose fast - introducing Theresa May at conference in her first year.
RULED OUT
Ben Wallace
The Defence Secretary is popular with MPs and the party’s grassroots, consistently topping the Cabinet league table run by Tory bible ConservativeHome.
He decided not to run to be Tory leader in the summer but by the party’s conference earlier this month, he was saying he wouldn’t rule it out.
Rumours had been swirling in Westminster that his backers are sounding out MPs to secure their support.
But Mr Wallace ruled himself out on Friday and said he was "leaning towards" backing Boris Johnson, praising his record on investing in defence and pointing to the "huge majority" he won in 2019.
The 52-year-old, who has been an MP since 2005, was widely praised for his response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The privately-schooled son of a soldier attended Sandhurst and served in Germany, Cyprus, Belize and Northern Ireland before entering politics in the early 2000s, including as an aide to Ken Clarke.
James Cleverly
The Boris Johnson and Liz Truss loyalist, 53, has risen through the party since he was elected MP for Braintree in 2015.
Born in London’s Lewisham Hospital and privately schooled, his Army career was cut short by a leg injury and he studied at what was then West London Polytechnic.
He worked in publishing, sales and advertising before co-founding a web publishing firm. He still serves in the Territorial Army.
He is not top of the bookies' rankings though and pulled out of the 2019 leadership race due to lack of support.
Jeremy Hunt
The new Chancellor is widely viewed as the most powerful person in Government at the moment after he immediately ripped up Liz Truss’s mini-Budget.
He insists he has no leadership ambitions - after two failed bids for the top job - and said after taking the job: "I rule it out, Mrs Hunt rules it out, three Hunt children rule it out."
Despite this, there was some speculation in Westminster that he took the job with an eye to being a caretaker PM.
“I think having run two leadership campaigns, and by the way failed in both of them, the desire to be leader has been clinically excised from me,” he told the BBC at the weekend.
A former Health Secretary and Foreign Secretary, Mr Hunt is one of the most experienced Conservative MPs.
But as a Remainer on the moderate wing of the party, he has his critics.
At the Department of Health, he stoked the fury of junior doctors by pushing through contracts deemed dangerous and is mistrusted in some parts of the NHS.
He reinvented himself as Chair of the Commons Health Committee, where he was highly critical of the Government’s handling of the Covid pandemic.
An MP since 2005, he was educated at £41,000-a-year public school Charterhouse and is a millionaire after founding the educational firm Hotcourses in 1990.
