Boris Johnson’s resignation announcement on Thursday sparked an internal row over the election of a new party leader, who will in turn be appointed prime minister by the Queen. Plans for the match will be signed off at the 1922 party committee meeting on Monday. The competition will be held in two stages. In the first, Conservative MPs will whittle down a long list of candidates to just two. A campaign will follow among the party’s 100,000 members, who will decide the next leader. Senior MPs on the 1922 committee’s executive committee said there was a desire to complete the parliamentary element of the two-stage competition before the Commons breaks for its summer recess on 21 July. A senior MP said the party was “confident” the initial stage could be completed quickly. “Actually I think it should be possible to complete all of this [the] year [the] The House returns in early September,” said a longtime lawmaker close to the process. Several candidates have already declared their intention to run. Suella Braverman, the pro-Brexit attorney general, was the first to speak. On Thursday, she launched a Twitter account for her campaign with the slogan “hope, safety and opportunity.” Steve Baker, a former minister and one of the Conservative Party’s most effective organizers, said he had been “begged” by fellow MPs to run for the leadership but stopped short of formally declaring his candidacy. Both candidates would seek approval from the European Research Group of MPs who support the permit. “I imagine Steve will end up backing Suella to try and unite the ERG vote,” predicted a senior Tory party figure. Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, has also entered the fray. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the former soldier said he wanted to form a “broad coalition of colleagues that will bring new energy and ideas to government” and “bridge the Brexit divide that has dominated our recent history”. Several more experienced candidates are expected to declare their intention to run in the coming days. Among them are Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary and Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi. Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak and former Health Secretary Sajid Javid are also considering bids, along with Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. These current and former cabinet ministers will draw on their experience in government to make their leadership. Zahawi will use his short time at the Treasury – he was appointed just two days before Johnson announced his intention to step down – to polish his pro-business and low-tax credentials, while Truss will focus on her role defending the agenda of ‘global Britain’. . Wallace would point to his achievements in supporting the Ukrainians in their war with Russia. Other lesser-known Tories likely to announce bids include Trade Secretary Penny Mordant and former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, both from the left of the party. According to a poll by JL Partners published on Thursday, Sunak would be the best candidate to beat Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer in a possible general election. Javid was second, three points behind the opposition leader, with the rest further behind. Bookmakers Ladbrokes have put Wallace as the favorite to succeed Johnson at odds of 5/2, with Sunak at 9/2, Mordaud at 6/1 and Truss at 8/1. Several candidates who stood in the 2019 contest after former prime minister Theresa May resigned have ruled themselves out of the race – including deputy prime minister Dominic Raab, former business secretary Andrea Leadsom and former health secretary Matt Hancock.

The leadership contenders will battle for endorsements from the party’s caucuses, including the ERG, the Liberal parliamentary group One Nation, the China Research Group of China-sceptics and the Northern Research Group which represents seats in the north of England. As in 2019, the leadership contest will be run jointly by the 1922 committee and the Conservative party council. The commission will elect a new 18-member board on Monday, in a vote unrelated to Johnson’s departure, before agreeing on how the competition will be conducted. A senior Tory spokesman said the committee election would be completed at 5pm on Monday. If Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 incumbent, is re-elected – there are no other candidates known to be running for the influential post – he will oversee the parliamentary pre-selection stage. Those familiar with his thinking said that if re-elected Brady would hold an “immediate” meeting of the executive on Monday to agree a timetable for choosing the next prime minister. It is unknown what threshold it will take to get Tory MPs on the ballot. In the 2019 contest, support from 5 per cent of Tory MPs was required to get through in the first round, and this rose to 10 per cent in subsequent rounds. A total of five rounds of parliamentary ballots were held for 10 candidates. Senior party figures with experience of past races predicted there would be “a worryingly large field of runners and riders”, with one MP suggesting such a big race could prove “very unpredictable”. Another Tory veteran said such a large number of candidates could “come out very quickly”, adding that MPs may only need to vote in two or three rounds before the final two are chosen.

A cabinet minister predicted the two candidates chosen could be “one person inside the government and one person outside,” adding that Truss and Zahawi could end up facing either Javid or Sunak. MPs are fully aware of their responsibilities in selecting a shortlist of just two. One said: “the base is well to the right of the parliamentary party. We have to make sure we don’t end up giving them a shortlist that could produce someone unfit to be prime minister.” The 1922 committee is likely to recommend that the grassroots stage of the competition be held through July and August. The timetable will be agreed at a meeting of the party’s governing board once it is elected on Monday. Several televised and regional meetings are expected to take place across the country as party campaigners make the final decision on who will replace Johnson as the UK’s next prime minister.