Politics latest: ‘Emergency’ prisons plan revealed – as government urged to decriminalize drug possession

After the Conservative Party lost the general election, Rishi Sunak announced he would resign as leader “once the formal arrangements for selecting my successor are in place”.

So how could the next leader be selected?

1922 committee

The body that governs Tory party leadership races is their backbench committee of MPs, the 1922 Committee.

This week, Tory MPs elected a new chair – Bob Blackman.

Decisions can now be taken about the timeframe and process of the leadership contest – although it is unclear when that will happen.

Rishi Sunak’s role

As it stands, the former PM remains leader of the party and leader of the opposition. He has appointed a shadow cabinet and will fulfill the constitutional requirements of the role – for now.

Mr Sunak could agree to stay as party leader until a permanent successor is selected – in which case he will continue to carry out the opposition leader role, including facing Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs.

But he could choose to step down before the contest is concluded, which he seemed to suggest in his resignation speech.

That would mean an interim leader would have to be chosen (that could fall to Oliver Dowden, who is the interim deputy leader – or Tory MPs could choose someone else entirely).

Will the party members have a say?

There is a broad consensus among Tory MPs that members should get a vote on who the new party leader should be.

Short vs long

Some Tories have proposed the contest should be short, so the new leader can be in place to challenge the Labour government as soon as possible – particularly when they present their first budget in the autumn.

The new 1922 committee chair told Sky News that his colleagues have expressed “a range of views” – but a consensus appears to be emerging that a long leadership contest is the right thing to do to ensure there is full debate on which direction the party should take.

It could mean that nominations for the new leader don’t even open for a number of weeks, and then MPs could whittle down the number of candidates – or not, and members could choose between multiple people.

There have been suggestions that the contest should not conclude until after the party’s conference in early October, like when David Cameron won back in 2005, so that the contenders effectively audition in front of the membership.