Two rising star Tory MPs launch leadership bids after being urged to take on Cabinet big beasts

TWO rising star Tory MPs have launched leadership bids after being urged to take on “failing” Cabinet big beasts.

Housing minister Kit Malthouse and Brexit minister James Cleverly are discreetly setting up campaign teams to challenge for the nation’s top job, The Sun can reveal.

Both are mainstream Leavers who were only first elected four years ago in 2015, and will run as unity candidates untarnished by the Tories’ bitter Brexit civil war.

The two men have each also been persuaded by friends from their intake that they can beat the big name candidates such as Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid.

But their entry into the already overcrowded race takes the number of serious contenders who are organising bids to a massive 17.

One Tory MP backing 52 year-old for Mr Malthouse, a former Deputy Mayor of London, told The Sun: “Most colleagues are lukewarm at best about all the early contenders because they are all

damaged in one way or another.

‘TIME FOR THE NEW GENERATION’

They’re failing to build reliable leads.”

“It’s time for the new generation, with new ideas and purpose, who can unite everyone. Kit is able to do that.”

Mr Malthouse, who authored a compromise Brexit plan to replace the Irish backstop in January, will next week launch a series of Tory-wide discussion groups on Brexit issues in a bid to bring the feuding Parliamentary party back together.

Mr Cleverly, 49, won broad plaudits for his broadcast skills in defending the troubled Tory government in his former role as deputy Tory chairman.

A supporter of ex-Army officer Mr Cleverly’s added: “For all their Oxbridge degrees, so few of the current leadership crop can sell and inspire like James can.

He is a natural born communicator and we are crying out for one against Corbyn”.

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