THE backbench 1922 committee has announced its latest executive ahead of setting the rules for the Tory leadership contest.
With 11 candidates throwing their hat in the ring so far, the race for the job of Prime Minister is heating up - but it won’t be long until the number will be quickly slashed.
The powerful 1922 committee, now that its latest members have been appointed, is set to make an announcement at 7pm on Monday on the rules of the contest.
Chairman Sir Graham Brady will head the group and immediately set the contest guidelines, after meeting with the Tory board on Monday night.
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Who are the new members of the 1922 committee?
Brady remains in post as Chairman, and will be backed by Will Wragg and Nus Ghani in the role of vice chair.
Both Wragg and Ghani served in this role in the previous term of the committee.
Wragg, MP for Hazel Grove, was one of the first Tory MPs to call for Boris Johnson to resign over the partygate scandal, while Ghani, MP for Wealden, claimed in 2022 that she had been dismissed as a transport minister in 2020 because she is muslim.
Three other vice chairs, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswalds), Bob Blackman (Harrow East), and Gary Sambrook (Birmingham Northfield) were reportedly re-elected unopposed.
The other 12 positions available on the committee executive are filled by three female and nine male MPs. None of the slots were filled by any of the six Scottish Tory MPs in the current parliamentary cohort.
They are; Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme), Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge), Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent central), Richard Graham (Gloucester), Chris Green (Bolton West), Robert Halfon (Harlow), Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye), Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough), Tom Randall (Gedling), David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner), John Stevenson (Carlisle) and Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes).
What happens next?
To whittle down the contender list - the rules of the leadership election will be released on Monday night after Brady has met with the Tory board, with an announcement expected at 7pm.
Bob Blackman, joint-executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, told Sky News: “We’ve got to slim down the list of candidates pretty quickly to two.
“And the one thing that we’re committed to do is to achieve getting to two candidates by Thursday July 21.
“That means that we’ll hold a succession of ballots over the next few days in order to get to that position.”
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The 1922 Committee will discuss raising the threshold of support needed to enter the race, with Blackman indicating this could be 20 MP nominations.
He said: “The view is that candidates to get on the ballot paper should demonstrate a broad swathe of support amongst Conservative MPs.
“So we’re looking at a proposer, a seconder and either 18 supporters or possibly more supporters in order to reduce that list.”
This could lead to complaints that lesser-known contenders are disadvantaged compared with household names such as ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak.
Sunak currently has the most nominations, followed by trade minister Penny Mordaunt and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat.
Newly-appointed Foreign Office minister Rehman Chishti, who launched an unlikely leadership bid on Sunday, appears to have none so far, while Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has the second-fewest.
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