FORMER home secretary Priti Patel has been eliminated from the Tory leadership campaign after the first round of voting.
Her defeat leaves bookies’s favourite Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat still in the running.
In a shock development, the former minister received just 14 votes in a poll of Tory MPs, with rival Stride, who has yet to officially launch his campaign, inching ahead on 16.
Hardline right-winger Jenrick came first with the support of 28 MPs, with Badenoch (below) close behind on 22, while Cleverly had 21.
Tugendhat came third last with 17 votes.
Voting continues among MPs until there are only two candidates remaining. Members get the final say.
Defeat will be bruising for Patel, with the former home secretary enjoying the biggest public profile among the contenders.
Recent research, which also found that voters were beginning to find the Conservatives “weird”, revealed that Patel was the only candidate who could be correctly identified from a photograph by most people.
Badenoch, widely tipped as the bookmakers’ favourite, has sought to position herself as someone who will govern further to the political right, claiming in her Monday launch event that the Tories “talked right but governed left, sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour”.
She launched her campaign earlier this week by reigniting a row with former Doctor Who actor David Tennant (above), a move for which she was criticised by some Conservatives.
Jenrick (below), widely seen as her closest rival for the job, has sought to centre his campaign on immigration, with a promise to introduce a binding cap on the number of legal migrants and to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Former security minister Tugendhat’s (below) pitch is for a reset with the public, based around restoring honesty to politics, while Cleverly, the shadow home secretary, has said his priorities as prime minister would be to boost national security, reduce migration and restore “confidence in capitalism”.
Patel had promised members she would get the Conservative Party back to its “winning ways” and touted her credentials in cabinet and her work on immigration and policing.
Stride has not held a launch event, but has made frequent appearances speaking to broadcasters during the early weeks of the contest.
There will be a second round of voting on Tuesday to axe another candidate before the final quartet is whittled down to two through a vote held between October 9 and 10.
Members' voting closes at 5pm on October 31 and Rishi Sunak's replacement will be announced on November 2.
