Robert Jenrick This week emerged as the frontrunner among Conservative MPs to take over the leadership of the party.
The former immigration minister Picked up 28 votes in the first ballot of MPspushing bookmakers' favourite Kemi Badenoch into second place on 22.
Dame Priti Patel dropped out after picking up just 14 votes and so was knocked out at the first stage of the race to replace Rishi Sunak.
Another round of voting will take place next week before the final four take their campaigns to the Tory conference starting on September 29.
Here Express.co.uk delves into the life of Mr Jenrick.
Mr Jenrick was born in 1982 to gas fitter, Bill, and secretary, Jenny, in Wolverhampton. He attended Wolverhampton Grammar school and was the first member of his family to go to university, studying history at St John's College, Cambridge.
His father was a small business owner from Manchester and his mother was from Liverpool. The couple set up their own fireplace-fitting business.
The leadership candidate qualified as a solicitor before going on to work as a director at the auction house, Christie's.
According to Mr Jenrick's website, his formative years were defined by the conservative values of “family, hard work, self-reliance, and pride of place”.
Mr Jenrick is married to Michal, who is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. They have three children, Marina, 12, Sophia, 10, and Lila, eight.
Mr Jenrick, 42, was former prime minister Rishi Sunak's immigration minister for a little over a year before he quit in protest over the last government's Rwanda plan.
He joined the party at the age of 15 and entered the Commons in 2014 as MP for Newark. He held on under a new constituency boundary in July, with a majority of 3,572 on a 39.2 percent vote share – a drop of -23.9 percent on 2019.
An early supporter of Boris Johnson's Tory leadership bid, Mr Jenrick had seen his majority treble from 7,000 to 21,000 when Mr Johnson won his landslide in 2019.
During his parliamentary career, Mr Jenrick served on the Public Accounts Committee, Health and Social Care Committee besides roles as Exchequer Secretary at the Treasury, Housing Secretary and Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care.
He was sacked as Mr Johnson's housing secretary after overruling a planning decision in a way which benefited businessman Richard Desmond, who later donated £12,000 to the Conservatives.
Mr Jenrick also appeared to break lockdown rules during the Covid pandemic by visiting his parents in Shropshire as well as traveling between London and his Herefordshire home.
Planning reforms aimed at delivering 300,000 new homes in England almost provoked a backbench rebellion as Tory MPs feared a backlash among constituents.
In December 2023, Mr Jenrick quit his immigration role, plunging Mr Sunak's government into crisis, having come hours after the former PM tabled a Bill to rescue his Rwanda policy.
He stood down after it emerged that legislation would not allow the government to override international law.
Taking a tough position on immigration, the former lawyer said on Monday that Britain must leave the European Convention on Human Rights as trying to reform it would be “doomed to failure”.
That idea would appeal to those on the Right of the party, drawn to Mr Jenrick's pledge to crack down on illegal migration – a major plank of his pitch to the Conservatives.
Immigration will be a key battleground for the Tories as they try to win back voters snatched by Nigel Farage's Reform UK at the General Election.
Writing in The Sunday Times after the Tories crushing general election defeat, Mr Jenrick said the party narrowly avoided being wiped out.
He argued the “near-existential” result was not because the party was too right or left wing, but because it had failed to deliver what it promised to the British people.
Mr Jenrick, who had backed Remain before championing Britain's EU exit, wrote: “We got Brexit done. But we must collectively confront a hard truth: we then failed to deliver the strong economy, NHS, and secure border we promised.”
The leadership contender said he now wanted an “effective and serious opposition”, adding: “We owe that to the country.”