Penny Mordaunt and Kemi Badenoch are in lead for the Conservative leadership according to polls

Penny Mordaunt has topped the latest poll of Tory Party members carried out by the Conservative Home website, receiving 19.6% of the vote.Kemi Badenoch followed in a close second with 18.7%, outperforming the former chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, who received 12.1% of the vote.The race to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader and prime minister officially begins today. It has been announced that the PM is expected to be replaced on September 5th.Other Conservative leader candidates include Suella Braverman, who received a 11.5% vote andForeign secretary Liz Truss with 10.93%.Boris Johnson officially announced his resignation last week after more than 50 MPs stepped down over his leadership.

Speaking outside Number 10 Downing Street, Johnson said: "It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister, and I've agreed with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of our backbench MPs, that the process of choosing that new leader should begin now and the timetable will be announced next week.

"He continued: "And I've today appointed a cabinet to serve as I will until the new leader is in place."So I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019, many of them voting conservative for the first time: thank you for that incredible mandate."Johnson will continue in his role as prime minister until a new conservative leader is appointed in autumn.Despite Johnson and MPs making the choice to step down from their roles, it's been reported that they will receive £420,000 in redundancy pay.

This is due to the Ministerial and Other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991, which makes sure MPs get 25% of their annual salaries in redundancy pay when they leave office, even if 'they leave in disgrace'.