Thread by @Jeremy_Hunt

Handing over to my team now for live updates from my launch event

.@PennyMordaunt: My name will be on Jeremy Hunt's nomination papers today. Because I believe he has the experience, values and a plan.

Our failure to deliver Brexit has put our country and our party in grave peril. The leadership I offer is based on one simple truth: without Brexit there will be no Conservative government and maybe no Conservative Party.

Whoever delivers Brexit will win the next election for the Conservative party.  But without Brexit no Conservative Prime Minister can win. So delivering Brexit and winning the next election are not different things - they are the same.

The person most likely to do that is someone who can negotiate a deal that will pass through parliament.

I would be the first Prime Minister for half a century who has won a marginal seat. Like Amber Rudd, whose endorsement I was proud to receive yesterday, I know what it’s like to fight for every single vote.

So as a campaigner, I know challenging elections can be won. As an entrepreneur, I know there’s no success without risk. And as a Brit, I know there’s nothing our great country can’t achieve.

With me to face the unyielding Brussels machine, you’ll be sending in a Prime Minister who has been negotiating all his life.

The lessons of the European and Peterborough elections are clear. If we fight an election before delivering Brexit, we will be annihilated.

So faced with bad choices, we need a Prime Minister who can negotiate some better choices. Having talked to many European leaders, I believe if we show determination, ingenuity and confidence, there is a deal to be done.

But just as I have never defined my own politics by Brexit, nor must we as a party. We need to broaden our appeal to remainers, to women, to minorities, to young people and to the centre ground.

That means an economic vision. As a tech entrepreneur, I will fire up our country to be the world’s next Silicon Valley, a hub of innovation based on our world-class universities, our creativity and our inventiveness.

It means a social mission. Prosperity not just for its own sake but prosperity with a purpose. I want our next social mission to be education.

So I will negotiate a long-term plan with the teaching profession: more funding in return for a guarantee that we will be the first generation to abolish illiteracy

Then this country needs to get its confidence back and start walking tall in the world. We need properly funded armed forces.

So I pledge to increase the percentage of our GDP we spend on defence alongside maintaining our commitment to 0.7% on international development.

Most of all, though, I want Conservatives to get our mojo back politically. How can the party of aspiration turn its backs on our most aspirational people?

I want young people everywhere to know that a Conservative government is there for you. So yesterday I published five pledges for young people.

The biggest single reason that I want to be Prime Minister is to make sure my children and grandchildren enjoy the same opportunities I did. To grow up in a prosperous and free country, bursting with opportunity for every single one of its citizens.

A country saved by the heroes of D-day we remembered last week, that looks to the future with as much confidence as the pride with which it remembers its past. That is the potential I seek to unleash. That is the country I seek to lead.

So choose me for unity over division. For experience over rhetoric. For tough negotiation over empty threats.

Choose me and I will take us through this time of crisis, deliver Brexit, and get us back to walking tall in the world.