Suella Braverman is unlikely to get the required support of 10 MPs to enter the Conservative leadership race, insiders from across the party believe.
i understands that early frontrunners James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat are all confident they will already have enough MP supporters to get on the ballot when nominations close on Monday afternoon.
Expectations are also that Kemi Badenoch, perhaps the narrow favourite, will also garner enough backing to make it through the first stage.
Questions remain over the likes of another ex-home secretary Priti Patel, and former Cabinet minister Mel Stride, who are not among the frontrunners to replace Rishi Sunak.
One party insider said some outsider candidates may be able to use a longer contest, with Sunak remaining in place until 2 November, as an opportunity to ask MPs for their backing to broaden the debate.
But despite this few give Braverman a chance of hitting the 10 MP supporters threshold after she has been deserted by key allies and backers such as Sir John Hayes and Danny Kruger for her former junior at the Home Office, the ex-immigration minister Jenrick.
“If you like her politics, you’ve got other places to go,” the insider said.
Another source on the right of the party said “she will fail”. “I’m not sure who, if anyone, is helping her.”
A third source involved in the race said it “doesn’t seem she’ll get 10 (MPs), so I’ve stopped thinking about it”.
The controversial ex-home secretary has been tipped for defection to Reform since her star has fallen among colleagues and has previously suggested the rival party’s leader Nigel Farage would be welcomed into the Tories.
On Tuesday, Braverman said the Tories must “grapple with this phenomenon of Reform” as she urged her party to reject “divisive identity politics and woke nonsense”.
The former home secretary, while guest-hosting a programme on LBC Radio, said: “Lifelong Conservative voters decided to dump us and vote for Reform at this general election because they were upset with the direction that the party was going in.
“I think for us going forward as a party, we need to really grapple with this phenomenon of Reform.
“So, we need to have credibility on immigration. We need policies and a leader that actually stands for lowering immigration, stands for stopping the boats, restoring some sanity to the immigration debate.”
But Cleverly hit back at Braverman’s previous warning that the Tories must not become “a collection of fanatical, irrelevant, centrist cranks”.
The Shadow Home Secretary, who succeeded Braverman at the Home Office, said: “Trying to carve up and divide up and factionalise … is the wrong way of thinking.”
The Conservative Party will announce its new leader on 2 November.
Nominations will open on Wednesday evening and close in the afternoon on Monday 29 July.
The parliamentary party will then narrow the field down to four, who will make their case at the Conservative Party conference, which runs from 29 September to 2 October.
The final two, picked by the parliamentary party, will then be voted on by Conservative Party members in an online ballot that will close on 31 October.
The result will be announced on 2 November.