Michael Gove in the context of "Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022"

The 2016 Conservative Party leadership election was held due to Prime Minister David Cameron's resignation as party leader. He had resigned after losing the national referendum to leave the European Union. Cameron, who supported Britain's continued membership of the EU, announced his resignation on 24 June, saying that he would step down by October. Theresa May won the contest on 11 July 2016, after the withdrawal of Andrea Leadsom left her as the sole candidate.

Conservative members of Parliament had voted initially in a series of ballots to determine which two candidates would go forward to a nationwide ballot of Conservative Party members for the final decision. Five Conservative MPs put themselves forward as candidates: Justice Secretary Michael Gove, Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb, former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change Andrea Leadsom, and Home Secretary Theresa May. Former Mayor of London Boris Johnson, seen as the front runner by political analysts, surprised many commentators by choosing not to run after Gove withdrew his backing and announced his own candidacy.

The Spectator is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. The Spectator is politically conservative, and its principal subject areas are politics and culture. Alongside columns and features on current affairs, the magazine also contains arts pages on books, music, opera, film, and TV reviews. It had an average circulation of 107,812 as of December 2023, excluding Australia.

Editorship of the magazine has often been a step on the ladder to high office in the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom; its past editors include Boris Johnson (1999–2005) and other former cabinet members Ian Gilmour (1954–1959), Iain Macleod (1963–1965), and Nigel Lawson (1966–1970). The former Conservative MP Michael Gove took over from Fraser Nelson as editor on 4 October 2024.

Vote Leave was a campaigning organisation that supported a "Leave" vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. On 13 April 2016 it was designated by the Electoral Commission as the official campaign in favour of leaving the European Union in the Referendum.

Vote Leave was founded in October 2015 by political strategists Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings as a cross-party campaign. It involved Members of Parliament from the Conservative Party, Labour Party and the sole UKIP MP, Douglas Carswell along with MEP Daniel Hannan and the Conservative peer Nigel Lawson. Labour MP Gisela Stuart served as chairman and Leader of the Vote Leave Campaign Committee as Co-Convenor with Michael Gove MP, of the Conservatives. The campaign was also supported by a number of prominent politicians; including outgoing Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who became a key figurehead for the Vote Leave campaign. A number of Vote Leave principals, including Douglas Carswell, Michael Gove, Bernard Jenkin and Anne-Marie Trevelyan, were also members of the influential IPSA resourced European Research Group.

Robert Edward Jenrick (born 9 January 1982) is a British politician who has been Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor since November 2024. He served in the Cabinet as Minister of State for Immigration from 2022 to 2023 in the Sunak ministry and as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government from 2019 to 2021 in the first and second Johnson ministries. He also served as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury from 2018 to 2019 in the second May ministry and as Minister of State for Health from September to October 2022 in the Truss ministry. A member of the Conservative Party, Jenrick has served as the Member of Parliament for Newark since the 2014 by-election.

Born in Wolverhampton, Jenrick attended St John's College, Cambridge, where he read history, followed by the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied political science. He then studied law, qualified as a solicitor, and practised corporate law with Skadden Arps and Sullivan & Cromwell in London and Moscow. He was elected as the MP for Newark at the 2014 by-election following the resignation of the Conservative Patrick Mercer after a cash-for-lobbying scandal. From 2015 to 2018 Jenrick was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Esther McVey, Michael Gove and Liz Truss, and Amber Rudd. He served as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury under Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond from 2018 to 2019. In July 2019, Boris Johnson appointed Jenrick to be Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government; he held this position until he was dismissed in September 2021.

Dominic Mckenzie Cummings (born 25 November 1971) is a British political strategist who served as Chief Adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 24 July 2019 until he resigned on 13 November 2020.

From 2007 to 2014, he was a special adviser to Michael Gove, including the time that Gove served as Education Secretary, leaving when Gove was made Chief Whip in a cabinet reshuffle. From 2015 to 2016, Cummings was director of Vote Leave, an organisation which successfully executed the 2016 referendum campaign for Britain's exit from the European Union. After Johnson was appointed prime minister in July 2019, Cummings was appointed as Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister. Cummings had a contentious relationship with Chancellor Sajid Javid which culminated in Javid's resignation in February 2020 after he refused to comply with Cummings's request to dismiss his special advisers.

Gisela Stuart, Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (née Gschaider; born 26 November 1955) is a British-German politician and life peer who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Edgbaston from 1997 to 2017. A former member of the Labour Party, she now sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.

Born and raised in West Germany, Stuart moved to the United Kingdom in 1974. Elected for Birmingham Edgbaston at the 1997 general election, she was chair of the Vote Leave Campaign Committee and was one of its most high-profile figures, along with the Conservative MPs Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. The Vote Leave campaign was successful in achieving its goal at the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum of winning a majority of votes for Leave. From 2016 to 2020, she served as chair of Vote Leave's successor organisation, Change Britain.