Deputy PM Oliver Dowden reveals his pick for next Tory leader in leaked recording

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden told his constituents who would be his preferred candidate to lead the Tory party other than Rishi Sunak, i can reveal.

Mr Dowden said he believed Health Secretary Victoria Atkins was the only other “star of his generation” capable of being Conservative party leader, a leaked recording shows.

Last week, the Health Secretary did not deny rumours that she may run for leader.

Asked by reporters at a London election event about her ambitions, she said: “I’m not entertaining any questions about my leadership. I want to campaign at the moment.”

Mr Dowden made the remarks at an “end of year social” constituency event in Hertsmere on 7 December last year, where Ms Atkins was a special guest.

“This is honestly the truth, when people ask me when I entered Parliament, ‘who are the two stars, who are the stars of your generation?’ I said there’s only two people from my generation that I could see leading the Conservative Party: Rishi Sunak or Vicky Atkins,” Mr Dowden said in the leaked recording, passed to i.

She greeted his vote of confidence with the exclamation: “Wow!”

Behind the scenes, several Tories are reported to be jockeying to take over the party should the Conservatives fall to the defeat predicted by the polls in Thursday’s election.

With a current majority of 28,868 in her constituency of Louth and Horncastle, Ms Atkins, 48, is one of the few potential Tory leadership contenders almost guaranteed to return to Westminster after the election.

Several other contenders to succeed Mr Sunak are from the same generation as 43-year old Oliver Dowden, with many of them also part of the same Parliamentary intake.

Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch are both 44, the same age as current Tory leader Rishi Sunak, while Robert Jenrick is 42.

Older potential challengers include Tom Tugendhat and Penny Mordaunt, both 51, Priti Patel, 52, and James Cleverly, 54.

The four contenders elected in the same intake as Mr Dowden and Mr Sunak in 2015 were Ms Atkins, Ms Braverman, Mr Cleverly and Mr Tugendhat, while Mr Jenrick came to Parliament a year earlier in a by-election, and Ms Badenoch was elected in 2017.

On the Oddschecker website, Ms Atkins is currently a 33/1 outsider to become the next Tory leader, with all of the other potential leadership contenders mentioned ahead of her – other than Nigel Farage and David Cameron.

In recent days, senior Tories have warned that Mr Dowden should not be allowed to take over as a caretaker leader if the Conservatives lose Thursday’s general election.

He is seen as a key voice in urging the Prime Minister to call a snap summer poll, a decision that has been heavily criticised by some Tory MPs.

Over the weekend, a senior Tory source told The Mirror that Mr Dowden was “a useless deputy prime minister with terrible political judgement”.

“He’s one of the reasons we are in this mess,” added the source.

Mr Dowden and the Conservative Party have been approached for comment.