Lincolnshire County Council leader Martin Hill’s verdict on Conservative leadership and mayor races

The leader of Lincolnshire County Council has named the two MPs he believes could win the Conservative leadership race.

While he refrained from pledging his support to any specific candidate, Martin Hill said he felt that Robert Jenrick, MP for Newark, and Kemi Badenoch, MP for North West Essex, appear to be making the most progress in their campaigns to become the official leader of the opposition.

Shortly after the July General Election, which saw the Labour Party win a majority with 411 seats, former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak formally stepped down as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

A new leader is set to be appointed on Saturday, November 2, until which point Sunak will remain as acting leader. Currently, four candidates are still in the running for the position: Jenrick, Badenoch, James Cleverly, MP for Braintree, and Tom Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge.

These will soon be whittled down to two final contenders after two rounds of voting take place at Westminster on October 9 and 10. Ballots then close for the final stage on October 31.

Following a meeting of Lincolnshire County Council's executive on Tuesday, when asked who he would like to see at the helm of the party, Mr Hill responded: "At the moment, it would seem to me that Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch are making the most progress.

"Whoever it is, I think we need to understand what went wrong and work out how we reconnect with those people who are of a Conservative disposition but felt that it wasn’t working."

The representative for the Folkingham Rural division also pointed out that voters seemingly couldn’t see much difference between the parties, which led to Labour winning the election with just 33.8% of the vote.

He believes this presents the party with an opportunity to return to what he felt people traditionally consider to be Conservative values, such as low taxes and supporting those in need.

We also took the opportunity to ask the Conservative leader for his thoughts on the current Tory candidates for the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire election taking place next May.

Since the devolution deal was formally approved by central government a few weeks ago, two former Lincolnshire MPs—Matt Warman and Karl McCartney—have announced their bids to become the Conservative candidate in the election.

Ben Bradley, leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, has also reportedly submitted an application to be the party's candidate, according to Nottinghamshire Live. Coun Bradley has been contacted to either confirm or deny this.

Mr Hill once again chose not to pledge his support to any specific candidate at this stage but suspected there might be a hustings in November where Conservatives from across the region will have a vote on who will represent them.

"I haven't heard the full list yet, but I think we have some pretty strong names in the running," he said.