11 politicians who could replace Boris Johnson as Tory leader if he loses no confidence vote

Boris Johnson is to face a vote of no confidence this evening as Partygate's hangover stretches on into the abyss.

Backbench boss Sir Graham Brady announced this morning he had received enough complains to trigger the vote, the results of which are expected to be announced at 9pm.

Johnson needs over 50 per cent of votes from his Conservative colleagues to sail through unscathed(ish). If he fails to garner this support needed, a leadership campaign will be triggered and we will get to call some other politician prime minister.

So, if Johnson's time is up, who are the MPs that might stand a chance at high office? Probably one of these eleven:

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Jeremy Hunt

Hunt stood against Johnson in 2019 and came second and is the bookies favourite to replace Johnson if he gets the boot.

Today, he announced he would be voting against Johnson in a Twitter thread that caused culture secretary Nadine Dorries to lose the plot at him.

Liz Truss

The foreign secretary is popular among members of the Conservative party and people have regularly suspected she wants to be the next leader of her party, not least because of her very active social media presence.

Rishi Sunak

He may have lost popularity due to controversies about his wife's tax arrangements, receiving a Partygate fine, and because of his cost of living crisis policies, but Sunak was once seen as Johnson's natural successor and maybe he will be able to win hearts and minds in the event of a leadership election.

Nadhim Zahawi

The education minister's last job was vaccines minister and it is a pretty consensual opinion that vaccinating the British population against Covid at speed was Pretty Good.

Zahawi recently hinted he was interested in the top job when he said it would be “a privilege” to be PM – but he did state that he was keen to see through his brief in education.

Sajid Javid

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has said “heads should roll” over Yorkshire’s handling of the allegations from Azeem Rafiq (Toby Melville/PA) PA Wire

Javid has served in various cabinet roles including as chancellor and in health and also ran as party leader in 2019. He came fourth then but could he do better another time round?

Ben Wallace

Defence secretary Wallace has become more popular lately because of his handling of the war in Ukraine and for evacuating refugees and British nationals from Afghanistan.

He has so far insisted he is “not interested” in running to replace the PM so we expect to see him in office by the end of the year.

Penny Mordaunt

Mordaunt also knows a thing or two about defence having served as defence secretary until Johnson sacked her when he came to power.

She supports Brexit and has spoken out against Partygate.

Tom Tugendhat

Tugendhat was the first to say he would run as leader if Johnson gets shown the door.

The former army man told Times Radio back in January that being the PM would be “a huge privilege”.

He added: “It’s one of those questions that I know many people ask and some of my colleagues are coy about, and I don’t understand why. I don’t think you should be embarrassed to want to serve your country.”

Priti Patel

Patel is popular among the right of the party and given her immigration policies and divisive policing bills we can't think why...

Dominic Raab

He's the deputy PM, he stood in for Johnson while he had Covid in 2020 and he is the justice secretary.

So there's that but he also got fired from his position as foreign secretary for hanging out on the beach while Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last summer.

Michael Gove

Gove is currently in charge of levelling up but could he level himself up and become the next prime minister? Maybe, he certainly has a lot of ministerial experience but we might have to drag him away from the dancefloor first.

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