Eight Conservatives will fight it out to succeed Boris Johnson as party leader and British prime minister after winning enough nominations from their colleagues to go through to the first round of voting on Wednesday.
Only two hopefuls failed to win the 20 necessary nominations, leaving a wide field of candidates seeking to win the backing of the party with promises of tax cuts, honesty and serious government, in a contrast to Johnson who was forced to announce he would resign after a series of scandals.
Former finance minister Rishi Sunak is the bookmakers` favourite, and among those he will be taking on are his successor Nadhim Zahawi and foreign minister Liz Truss in what is becoming an increasingly testy and divisive contest.
The next British leader faces a daunting in-tray while support for the Conservatives is also falling, polls show.
Britain`s economy is facing rocketing inflation, high debt, and low growth, with people grapple with the tightest squeeze on their finances in decades, all set against a backdrop of an energy crunch exacerbated by the war in Ukraine which has sent fuel prices soaring.
As the contest heated up, rival campaigns stepped up private criticism of each other and pointed to either financial or other questions hanging over their opponents.
Sunak kicked off his campaign by portraying himself as the serious candidate, promising "grown up" honesty "not fairy tales", seeking to contrast himself with the extensive tax cuts pledged by most of the other candidates.
"It is not credible to promise lots more spending and lower taxes," Sunak said, saying tax cuts could only come after soaring inflation was tackled.
As finance minister, Sunak set Britain on course to have its biggest tax burden since the 1950s, and most of the other hopefuls have turned their fire on him by saying they would oversee cuts immediately.
`SOUND MONEY`
The former finance minister has the widest support among colleagues who have publicly expressed their view.
Penny Mordaunt, a junior trade minister who is also heavily tipped, topped a poll of Conservative members on Monday and she too has tried to strike a more measured tone on tax, saying that while she would cut taxes: "I will pioneer sound money."
"I am a small state, low tax conservative, but I also believe we need to use the levers of government to support jobs and livelihoods through difficult economic situations," she wrote in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Attorney General Suella Braverman, the former health minister Jeremy Hunt, Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, and Kemi Badenoch, a former junior minister who is scooping up support on the right wing of the party, were among other candidates to enter the first round of the contest.
Foreign Secretary Truss received the backing on Tuesday of two ministers closest to Johnson - Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg - who have both been critical of Sunak.
The 1922 Committee of Conservative members of parliament which is organising the contest says the field will soon be whittled down with repeated votes in the next few weeks, with the final two then selected by the fewer than 200,000 party members by July 21.
The winner, and Britain`s new prime minister, will be announced on Sept. 5.
Meanwhile the opposition Labour Party said the government had blocked its attempt to call a confidence vote in Johnson on Wednesday to force him from office immediately.
The government said that it would allow Labour to call a confidence vote if the wording of the motion was changed to remove reference to Johnson.
