UK Conservatives jostle in crowded, testy leadership race

LONDON (AP) — Candidates to replace Boris Johnson as Britain’s prime minister are scattering tax-cutting promises to their Conservative Party electorate, as party officials prepare Monday to quickly narrow the crowded field of almost a dozen candidates.

Little-known junior minister Rehman Chishti became the 11th candidate to declare he wants to succeed Johnson, who quit as party leader on Thursday amid a party revolt triggered by months of ethics scandals. Other contenders include Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Treasury chief Nadhim Zahawi, former health secretaries Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt, and backbench lawmakers Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch.

The new leader will be chosen in a two-stage election, in which the 358 Conservative lawmakers reduce the race to two candidates through a series of elimination votes. The final pair will be put to a postal ballot of all party members across the country. Under Britain’s parliamentary system the next party leader will automatically become prime minister without the need for a general election.

The party’s 1922 Committee, which runs leadership contests, is set to elect a new executive on Monday, which will lay out rules for the contest. The committee wants to complete the parliamentary stage of the election by the time lawmakers break for the summer on July 21. That would mean a summer second round with a new leader in place by the time the House of Commons returns on Sept. 5.

One key decision by the committee will be how many nominations a candidate will need to get onto the first ballot. At the last leadership contest in 2019 it was eight, but the threshold is expected to be 20 or more this time — a move that could eliminate some contenders immediately.

Many Conservatives are wary of leaving Johnson in office for too long,...