But before these party members get a (postal) vote, Tory MPs will, in a series of ballots, choose the two finalists.

On Monday, 10 Conservative MPs got the requisite eight nominations from their colleagues to get on the ballot. There are so many candidates because last time everyone who declared got a Cabinet post from Theresa May, as a “thanks for not beating me” present.

The party’s 313 MPs begin voting on Thursday to start to winnow down the candidates to the top two, for the membership vote.

Here are the runners and riders.

Boris Johnson

The former Foreign Secretary and Mayor of London is a clear favourite to make the final two – and win – thanks to a long campaign (and reportedly daily advice from election guru Lynton Crosby) plus a new, sensible haircut and relentless media attention.

His backers' greatest fear, reportedly, isn't any another candidate but their man doing or saying something daft.

Johnson is blatantly wooing Tory members. His big pitch is an income tax cut for three million of the country’s top earners by changing tax thresholds.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Johnson supporter, says Johnson is the only candidate with street appeal. “He’s very popular on the doorstep, people are really pleased to see him,” Rees-Mogg claimed.

The narrative is that only Johnson can beat populist Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party if there’s an election. But Johnson spent a lot of time in the constituency of Peterborough a week ago in the lead-up to a byelection and the Conservatives came a distant third.

As frontrunner, every other candidate is out to get him, painting him as flaky, ambitious and unreliable.

He is massively disliked on the continent, where he has promised to negotiate a new Brexit deal.

But he’s most likely to win, say pundits.

Jeremy Hunt

The current Foreign Secretary is emerging as the consensus "stop Boris" candidate – though his backers snarkily say that title should go to Johnson himself.

It says something about the current Tory party that the "moderate" candidate says abortions should be banned after 12 weeks from conception. He also wants to spend £20 billion more on defence.

On Brexit – the only thing that matters to most Tories (three-quarters of members rank it the most important issue facing the country) – Hunt is not entirely firm on the October 31 exit date, unlike Johnson. But like most other candidates he says the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels can be renegotiated if the UK just tries harder, something the European Union keeps denying.

Michael Gove

The Environment Secretary was a firm favourite to reach the last two until last Friday, but has lost a lot of support after admitting on the weekend he’d used cocaine 20 years ago.

It seems the main problem is not the drug itself, but the hypocrisy in subsequently criticising others for taking cocaine.

Also, the fact he handled the controversy so badly is seen as a bad sign for a man who had been considered PM material. He’s a fine parliamentary performer, who has shown an ability to rally MPs against Jeremy Corbyn, but his credentials as the “not Boris” candidate are tarnished by the revelation that actually he’s quite a bit like Boris (who has previously admitted cocaine use, but hedged it more cleverly).

Gove has also toyed with a tax plan, suggesting he’d like to abolish VAT – the UK’s GST. He wants to replace it with a lower sales tax, precisely the opposite decision to most of the rest of the world (including Australia), and one economists have been quick to criticise as expensive and risky.

Sajid Javid

The home secretary was tipped to emerge as a not-Boris consensus candidate but has so far struggled for oxygen in the leadership campaign.

On Brexit, he has promised a “grand gesture” to pay for a “digitised” Irish border that would solve Brexit. Details are vague.

Javid was backed by popular Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who said he embodied the party’s values of aspiration and hard work. The son of Pakistan immigrants “isn’t just best placed to tell the story of modern Britain, he embodies it,” she said.

Dominic Raab

The former Brexit Secretary is trying to carve out a candidacy as the "sensible Boris" – a man who nearly negotiated a proper Brexit but was cruelly over ruled by Downing Street. Given another chance, he says, he’d get it done.

He, too, has come up with a tax plan. This one is the opposite of Johnson’s: lifting the lowest tax threshold to take the lowest-paid out of payroll taxes altogether.

He has hit a rough patch after saying he was “probably not” a feminist. On the plus side, he says he’s never taken Class A drugs (but did smoke cannabis at university).

Rory Stewart

The International Development Secretary, a former diplomat, is extremely unlikely to win but is a most entertaining candidate.

He is mildly well-known for being one of the few Conservatives over the last two years willing to go on television and be sceptical about Brexit, and now one of the vanishingly rare Conservatives to firmly rule out a "no deal".

Quite posh (he was personally chosen to tutor young princes William and Harry in 1993) and rumoured to be ex-MI6, he also caused a stir by admitting he may have smoked opium at a wedding in Iran.

But he is best known for some endearingly awkward campaign posts on social media in which he turned up in places like Kew Gardens and invited members of the public to ask him questions. He has also tried to claim the “not Boris” mantle, telling The Times it was “not patriotic to bullshit”.

Matt Hancock

The Health Secretary is a 100/1 outsider, not helped by campaign pitches such as “I offer an emotionally-charged platform to improve lives that is rooted, rooted in objective fact”.

He also declared that he “loves people” and gave out free phone chargers to Conservative MPs.

Andrea Leadsom

The former leader of the House of Commons is a Hard Brexit candidate, with a complicated plan that sounds like “no deal” but she insists isn’t. In any event she has so far been overshadowed by the other Brexiter candidates.

Her star rose during May’s reign, but she has so far made an uninspiring offer to MPs, reminding them that tax cuts and Brexit will be hard to drive through the House of Commons as a minority government.

It’s true, but it’s not exciting.

Esther McVey

If she won, she would be the first British prime minister to have taken part in The Vagina Monologues.

She is another hard Brexiter and a former breakfast TV host. She promised more funding for policing and education. The lectern at her campaign launch had a little portrait of Margaret Thatcher attached to it.

Mark Harper

Another of the "who?" candidates that the other candidates get cross with, because they drag the process out, but who believes he can finagle a way through as a compromise candidate between the party's extremes.

The Health Secretary has set out a "Brexit delivery plan", which involves setting up an Irish Border Council to come up with a Brexit delivery plan.