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Housing minister Kit Malthouse launches bid to become next prime minister
Housing minister Kit Malthouse has become the 10th Conservative MP to throw his hat into the ring to become the next prime minister.
Mr Malthouse, who took on the housing brief from Dominic Raab last July, has declared his intention to run in the Conservative leadership race following Theresa May’s announcement that she will step down on 7 June.
He joins other senior Conservative figures such as: Boris Johnson, environment secretary Michael Gove, foreign affairs secretary Jeremy Hunt, and former leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom. He is the second MP in the race to have held the housing minister role, with Dominic Raab, who held the role for six months, also in the race.
Mr Malthouse, who is MP for North West Hampshire, announced his intention to run for leadership in The Sun this morning. In a 750-word column outlining why he should be the next prime minister, he wrote that there was a “yearning for change” from the public and he believed he was “the new face with fresh new ideas” the country needed.
He also wrote: “As housing minister, it’s been my mission to build more high-quality homes as fast as we can, and numbers are looking good but there is much more work to do.”
During the 2016 EU referendum, Mr Malthouse campaigned for the UK to leave the European Union.
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He shot to prominence earlier this year when he put forward the ‘Malthouse Compromise’ which involved the redrafting of a backstop deal with Northern Ireland and the extension of a transition period with the EU until 2021.
Mr Malthouse became an MP for the first time after the 2015 general election. Prior to this, he was deputy mayor for business and enterprise for three years under then-mayor of London Boris Johnson.
Mr Malthouse’s other roles in government include time as the parliamentary under-secretary of state for family support, housing and child maintenance in the Department for Work and Pensions. During this time he was involved in the roll-out of Universal Credit, and wrote for Inside Housing three months prior regarding changes the government made to try to ease the transition.
