Kemi Badenoch has formally announced her intentions to run for the Tory party leadership, while Suella Braverman has ruled out entering the race. Betting favourites early on, Ms Badenoch joins Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly, and Robert Jenrick as contenders to succeed Rishi Sunak.

In a piece she penned for The Times, Ms Badenoch was critical of her party, stating it deserved to lose in the general election because it had become "unsure of who we were, what we were for and how we could build a new country".

She further wrote: "The country will not vote for us if we don't know who we are or what we want to be. That is why I am seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party to renew our movement and, with the support of the British people, to get it to work for our country again."

Noted for her outspoken and often controversial views on gender matters, like advocating changes to the Equality Act to solely define sex as biological, the Shadow Housing Secretary established quite the reputation. She also dismissed suggestions of welcoming Reform UK leader Nigel Farage into the Tory ranks.

On the contrary, Suella Braverman acknowledged that she had garnered adequate backing to enter the race for Rishi Sunak's successor but chose against it. In her write-up for The Telegraph, the previous Home Secretary remarked there was "still no consensus" on what resulted in the Tories' most devastating general election defeat and voiced her frustration at being "vilified" by colleagues for airing her opinion.

She penned that the issues were due to increasing taxes while promising the opposite, failing to reduce immigration and overreacting to the Covid-19 pandemic.

She also pointed fingers at the failure to "tackle the long tail of Blairism" embedded in the Human Rights Act, Equality Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and for being in power as "transgender ideology and critical race theory seeped into our institutions".

The party must also face up to the "existential threat" posed by Reform UK, she added.

She admitted she couldn't run for leadership "because I cannot say what people want to hear".

"I've been branded mad, bad and dangerous enough to see that the Tory Party does not want to hear this. And so I will bow out here."

Nominations are set to close at 2.30pm on Monday.

Candidates require a proposer, seconder and eight other supporters to stand.

The parliamentary party will whittle down the contenders to four, who will present their case at the Conservative Party conference, taking place from September 29 to October 2.

The final two, chosen by the parliamentary party, will then proceed to a vote of party members in an online ballot that will conclude on October 31 with the result announced on November 2.