HARD-RIGHT Islamophobe Robert Jenrick has retained first place in the second-round ballot for the Tory leadership.

Conservative MPs gave him 33 votes, while dumping former chief whip Mel Stride out of the contest on Tuesday.

Querulous culture warrior Kemi Badenoch slightly closed the gap on the front-runner, with 28 votes.

Two candidates regarded as championing a more centrist conservatism, former home secretary James Cleverly and ex-security minister Tom Tugendhat, tied in third place with 21 MPs apiece.

The four remaining candidates will now have the opportunity to strut their stuff at the Conservative conference at the end of the month.

Thereafter, the 121 Tory MPs will whittle the race down further, until two remaining candidates are left to be balloted on by the pensionable reactionaries in the Conservative Party.

On November 2, the winner will finally be revealed, and Rishi Sunak will be able to lay down the leadership burden and spend more time with his money.

Mr Cleverly and Mr Tugendhat are most likely to pick up new support from Mr Stride’s 16 MPs, leaving the top two too close to call at present.

Mr Jenrick is mainly known for reportedly cutting an illegal planning deal with a former porn baron, demanding cartoon murals be painted over at an asylum centre for children, offering total backing to Israel’s Gaza genocide and demanding the banning of the Muslim religious invocation “God is Great” in public.

This record of sleaze, performative cruelty, Islamophobia and neoconservatism will likely make him hard to beat.