None of the eight candidates who will go forward to be the next Leader of the UK Conservative Party and by default Prime Minister, received a nomination from Dumfries and Galloway’s two MPs.

To be included in the first ballot of Tory MPs a candidate had to secure 20 nominations from fellow Conservative MPs. A series of ballots starting today will be held to whittle down the number of candidates and Conservative Party members will only be allowed to choose between two candidates – despite 11 initially putting their names forward.

The first round of voting from Tory MPs will take place today from 1pm to 3 pm and any candidate who gets less than 30 votes from their fellow MPs will have to drop out. Over the next few days, further votes will take place to whittle the number of candidates down to a final two.

The final two will then go to a full ballot of just 160,000 Conservative Party members over the summer to decide who the Prime Minister will be.  The result is expected on 5 September.

South Scotland Labour MSP Colin Smyth said, “It’s a bit embarrassing for our region’s MPs that they couldn’t be bothered putting forward a nomination for their own Leader. It begs the question if they don’t think any of the candidates are good enough to be nominated, why should the public think they are good enough to be Prime Minister?

“Our local MPs will have known each candidate personally for many years so any claims they hadn’t made up their mind won’t be believed by anyone . I suspect this is a classic case of them hedging their bets and waiting to see who the front runner is then backing them in the hope that if they do win, they will give them a job.

“I would have hoped that they would have made a nomination albeit based on the least worst of a bad bunch to be our Prime Minister rather than just waiting to back the winning candidate so they can hand them a Ministerial post’.”