Campaign group Leave.EU has thrown its weight behind Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom for next Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister.
The group said that internal polling showed her to be “clear favourite” among their Conservative supporters, with co-chairman Arron Banks commenting: “We’ve conducted extensive polling of our one million supporters and discovered that 43% typically vote Conservative, including as many as 30,000 paid-up party members.
“The data indicates that Andrea Leadsom is the clear frontrunner among those supporters,” he said.
“Leave.EU was the only organisation to call the referendum result almost exactly right, at 52/48 in favour of Brexit, so the Establishment should sit up and take note.
Mr Banks added that whoever becomes Prime Minister should be “fully committed” to Brexit, and slammed current front-runner Theresa May.
“Remain supporter Theresa May, who seems to be getting carried along on an undeserved reputation for ‘toughness’ despite the fact that she has presided over the greatest increases in immigration of any Home Secretary in history and happily slashed away at our Border Force and Coast Guard to appease George Osborne, is manifestly not that person,” he said.
“Neither is Michael Gove, whose recent actions have done much to poison relations among Leave supporters within the Conservative Party and is now seen as being more concerned with his own ambitions than with leading the country out of the EU.
“We need a clean break and a fresh face. Andrea was the breakout star of the Leave campaign during the referendum: calm, assured and, in contrast to May and Gove, honest; putting the case for Brexit eloquently and passionately.
“Leave.EU will therefore be throwing its full weight behind Andrea, particularly online. 15,000 people a day visit our website for information on Brexit, and we reach as many as twenty million people a week through our social media presence, bypassing the the print and broadcast media entirely. This converted countless Leave votes during the referendum, and we expect to have a similar impact on Andrea’s leadership bid.”