Under-fire Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick has revealed he gave his daughter the middle name 'Thatcher'.

The hardliner, who is battling to succeed Rishi Sunak, got a hearty round of applause as he made the revelation. He told an audience at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham that he wanted to "remind her of a great Prime Minister". He said his daughter was born in 2013 - the year the Iron Lady died.

It comes after his rival Kemi Badenoch compared herself to Mrs Thatcher as the current flock of MPs battle over her legacy. Addressing the party faithful on Monday, Ms Badenoch - who has come under fire over remarks about maternity pay - compared herself to the former Tory PM, who is often quoted as saying: “There is no such thing as society.”

Ms Badenoch said this quote had come from an interview Mrs Thatcher had done with Women’s Own magazine where a “very good explanation got cut down into a soundbite that was used to attack her”.

She continued: “When you are a leader, when you are a Conservative, when you are making the argument for Conservative principles, your opponents are going to try and turn it into something else. We need to decide who's going to be leader of the party, not the left, not the Guardian, not the BBC, just Conservatives.”

Mr Jenrick faces fresh fury over his claim that UK special forces are "killing rather than capturing terrorists" in a video that has been branded "nasty propaganda".

The Tory leadership hopeful was unable to say whether he knows that UK special forces are doing so after he said it in a promotional video attacking the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for his campaign. He was tied in knots in a radio interview on Tuesday, a day after he posted a video saying why he thinks the UK should leave the ECHR. In it, he said: "Our special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists because our lawyers tell us if they're caught the European Court will set them free."