Who will be the next Conservative leader?

The votes are in. The next leader of the Conservative Party will be either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick.

James Cleverly has been booted out of the Tory leadership race, but in the last round of voting he was comfortably in the lead, and it was thought he was guaranteed to be in the final two. Now, Cleverly’s gone.

The eventual winner of the Tory leadership race will replace the last prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who resigned after a terrible defeat at the July general election.

But who are the remaining two? What do they stand for? And what could this mean for the direction of the party?

Both the finalists are on the right of the Conservative party. And this is a surprise to some –  at the beginning of the race many thought the final two would come down to a right-winger versus someone more centrist (like James Cleverly, who’s now out of the race).

Robert Jenrick has been saying he wants to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and has been attacking net zero policies.

Kemi Badenoch promises to review everything the government is doing. She’s been talking about the grip the left has on the state and bureaucracy and she’s promised to change that.

So what happens now?

The leadership contest is a little different from here on in. So far, it’s only the Tory MPs who have been voting – 121 of them – but now it’s up to the party members.

Two years ago, the House of Commons library said there were 170,000 Tory party members. Now the number is estimated to be just north of 100,000.

Either way, it is a very small percentage of the electorate that will be choosing the next Tory leader.

At the moment, Kemi Badenoch is in the lead today with Tory MPs, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to be the frontrunner in the next vote.

The last time voting for Tory leader went to the members in 2022, Rishi Sunak was the favourite among MPs, but Liz Truss won over the membership in the end.

Although this time around Kemi Badenoch is actually pretty popular with members, as well as the MPs.

But talking to Tory MPs today, many say Robert Jenrick is also really popular with their membership. The truth is, nobody knows right now. This is a real toss-up between the two.

And why is all of this important? Because, as leader of the opposition, one of these two are only one general election away from potentially being the next prime minister.

It’s more important though for the future of the Tory party – which lost millions of votes in the July general election to the Reform Party. So you may think that with a more right-wing person running the Conservative party, they might recoup some of those votes they lost to Reform.

But remember, all those voters only translated into five MPs for Nigel Farage’s Reform party. And a more right-wing candidate may make it a lot harder to bring back all of those voters that went to the Lib Dems. Ed Davey’s Lib Dems won 72 seats in the general election.

The new path the party walks down, led by the new leader, is a question for the future. Right now, they have to become the leader – and that will be decided on November 2.