- The election for UK's new prime minister will take place within the governing party next week.
- Nominations opened on Thursday night and will close on Monday.
- The contest will replace Liz Truss as UK's prime minister after she resigned on Thursday.
A contest to replace Liz Truss as Conservative Party leader and Britain's prime minister is underway after she said on Thursday she would resign.
The election will take place within the governing party and is due to be completed next week.
The chair of the Conservative Party's 1922 Committee of backbench lawmakers Graham Brady laid out the rules of the contest on Thursday. Below are the highlights:
CONSERVATIVE PARTY LEADERSHIP CONTEST
- Any candidate running to be leader of the Conservative Party should have nominations from a minimum of 100 party lawmakers.
- Nominations opened on Thursday night and close at 13:00 GMT on Monday.
- If only one candidate secures the nominations of 100 lawmakers, there will be no vote for party members and that candidate automatically becomes party leader and prime minister on Monday.
- There will be hustings on Monday.
- The first ballot of lawmakers will be held between 14:30 GMT and 16:30 GMT on Monday.
- If there are three candidates, the candidate with the fewest number of votes will be eliminated. The result will be announced at 17:00 GMT.
- There will be an indicative vote of lawmakers once there are two candidates.
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- The vote between the final two candidates would then go to around 170 000 Conservative Party members via an online ballot.
- If a second (indicative) vote is needed, this will be held between 17:30 GMT and 19:30 GMT on Monday. The result will be announced at 20:00 GMT.
- The party members' ballot will close at 10:00 GMT on Friday, 28 October and the result will be announced the same day.
WHAT ABOUT A GENERAL ELECTION?
- The contest to replace Truss as prime minister is an internal Conservative Party process and does not need a national vote of the wider British public, commonly known as a general election.
- Opposition parties have called for a general election, saying the Conservatives have shown themselves unfit to govern.
- But the government chooses when to hold an election, and the deadline to hold one isn't until January 2025.
- With the governing Conservatives far behind in the polls, it is seen as extremely unlikely that the new prime minister would choose to hold an election.
- Opposition parties could seek to force an election by holding a vote of no confidence in the government. If enough rebel Conservatives sided with the opposition and the government lost, an election could be triggered but this is considered unlikely.