Conservative Party members of at least three months standing are to choose our next prime minister – will it be Andrea Leadsom MP or Theresa May MP?
The Association is impartial (as it was over the EU referendum) and, therefore, the two candidates are listed in alphabetical order.
While we await the issuing their manifestos, here are brief descriptions of them taken from Wikipedia:
Andrea Jacqueline Leadsom (pronounced /ˈlɛdsəm/; née Salmon; born 13 May 1963) has served as Minister of State for Energy at the Department of Energy and Climate Change since 11 May 2015, having held the post of Economic Secretary to the Treasury from April 2014. She was first elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament for South Northamptonshire at the 2010 general election.
Andrea was born in Aylesbury and attended Tonbridge Girls' Grammar School; she read Political Science at the University of Warwick. After graduating in 1987, she began a career in the financial sector as a debt trader for Barclays de Zoete Wedd, then the investment bank division of Barclays Bank where she was a Deputy Director in the Financial Institutions team from 1993. In this role, she said she was given a 'ringside seat' in the collapse of Barings Bank.
She supported the Leave campaign during the 2016 EU referendum. In the Conservative party leadership election, she came a distant second to Theresa May in the first and second round votes. She said she would conduct swift negotiations with the European Union if she became PM.
Theresa Mary May (née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) has been Home Secretary since 2010. She was first elected as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Maidenhead in 1997. She identifies as a One-Nation Conservative and has been characterised as a liberal conservative.
Born in Eastbourne, Sussex, she studied geography at St Hugh's College, Oxford. From 1977 to 1983 she worked at the Bank of England and from 1985 to 1997 at the Association for Payment Clearing Services, also serving as a councillor for the London Borough of Merton's Durnsford Ward.
After unsuccessful attempts to get elected to the House of Commons in 1992 and 1994, she was elected MP for Maidenhead in the 1997 general election. She went on to be appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party and be sworn of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council in 2002.
She served in a number of roles in the Shadow Cabinets of William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, and David Cameron, including Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, before being appointed Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities in 2010, giving up the latter role in 2012.
In the Conservative party leadership election, she quickly emerged as the frontrunner and has described herself as a candidate who will unify the party after a divisive referendum.
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For the record, the results of the parliamentary elections, which have led to the run off between Ms Leadsom and Ms May are:
Candidate First Ballot: Second Ballot:
5 July 2016: 7 July 2016
Votes % Votes %
Theresa May 165 50.2 199 60.5
Andrea Leadsom 66 20.1 84 25.5
Michael Gove 48 14.6 46 14 – Eliminated
Stephen Crabb 34 10.3 Withdrew, endorsed May
Liam Fox 16 4.9 Eliminated, endorsed May
Turnout 329 99.7 329 99.7
The result will be announced on 2 September 2016.