Boris Johnson is set to quit as Prime Minister on Thursday, kicking off the hunt for a new British leader.
The following is how the process for finding Johnson’s replacement will work:
– Candidates for the leadership, of whom there may be many, must be nominated by two other Conservative legislators.
– Conservative lawmakers will next undertake numerous rounds of voting to narrow the options. Each time, they are asked to cast a secret ballot for their preferred candidate, and the person with the fewest votes is removed.
– The procedure is repeated until only two applicants remain. Previously, elections were conducted on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
– The last two candidates are then submitted to a postal ballot of the Conservative Party membership as a whole, with the winner being proclaimed the next leader.
– The de facto prime minister is the leader of the party with a majority in the House of Commons. He or she is not required to call a snap election but has the authority to do so.
How much time will it take?
The length of the leading competition might vary depending on how many individuals enter. Theresa May took over as Prime Minister less than three weeks after David Cameron resigned in 2016, and all other competitors dropped out in the middle of the contest.
Johnson defeated former health minister Jeremy Hunt in a Conservative Party run-off election to succeed May in 2019 and entered office two months after May declared her decision to quit.