Most Tory MPs want a long leadership contest to give them time to find a “credible” alternative to Labour, the shadow defence secretary has said.
James Cartlidge told Sky News his party needs a few months to “analyse what went wrong” after their “calamitous” general election results.
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With details of the timeline yet to be confirmed, Mr Cartlidge said: “I’m happy to say… colleagues generally want to go long. They want to take their time over this.
“We need to take our time choosing the next leader because they need to be tested.
“We need to test what their ideas are, because what we need to get out of this is someone who can form a credible, positive alternative to Labour. And I think we should take our time over that.”
The rules of the leadership contest will be set by the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbench MPs, which last week appointed Bob Blackman as its new chair.
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Mr Cartlidge said while a timeline is yet to be set, he believes “a lot will be happening in the autumn party conference”.
He said he’d like to see the event, running from 29 September to 2 October, to be “a hustings conference, a chance to have the individual candidates properly put through their paces”.
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Asked if he was happy for Rishi Sunak to stay in charge during this time or if an interim leader should take over, he said “that was up to him” and the big question is who should replace him in the long term.
“It’s ultimately about what they [the next leader] stand for. And we need to have debates as a party, you know, what are our priorities going to be?”
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Hinting at what direction he’d like the party to go in, he added: “I think we need to have a broad appeal.
“We don’t want to have a knock on a door and someone’s of a certain age and they’re likely not to be voting Conservative.”
No one within the Tory party has officially announced their candidacy, though Sky News understands that former home secretary Dame Priti Patel, a favourite on the right of the party, will run.
A number of other candidates on the right are expected to throw their hats in the ring too, including Ms Patel’s successor in the Home Office, Suella Braverman, former business secretary Kemi Badenoch and ex-immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
The previous security minister Tom Tugendhat is seen as a potential successor from the party’s moderate wing, alongside former health secretary Victoria Atkins.
Others, like former Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, lost their seats in an election wipe-out that saw the once dominant party reduced to just 121 MPs.
The party is spilt on whether to gravitate back towards the centre ground, given it lost many votes to Labour and the Lib Dems, or tilt towards the right to combat the threat of Reform UK.
