Portrait of the week | 7 July 2016

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Conservative MPs set about finding two candidates for the party leadership to be put to party members as rival choices. Theresa May proved the frontrunner, gaining 165 votes in the first round, with Liam Fox least fancied, being eliminated in the first round with 16 votes, and Stephen Crabb gaining 34 and throwing in the towel. Boris Johnson, having been forced out of the contest by the sudden entry of his presumed supporter Michael Gove (who attracted 48 votes in the first round), gave his backing to the next most popular woman candidate among MPs, Andrea Leadsom, who polled 66. Mrs May said that the position of British citizens in the EU and those from the EU in Britain would be an issue in the negotiations with the EU. Mrs Leadsom undertook to guarantee the rights of EU citizens already living and working in Britain. Mrs May urged a Commons vote on replacing Trident before the summer recess on 21 July.