Category Archives: Conservatives

Conor Burns sacked after being seen ‘touching young man’s thigh’, witness says

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Tory minister, who denies any wrongdoing, reported for incident in hotel bar during party’s conference

The trade minister Conor Burns was sacked from the government and suspended as a Conservative MP after he was seen touching a young man’s thigh in a Tory conference hotel bar, it has been claimed.

According to the BBC on Saturday, an eyewitness said the former minister was seen with the man in the early hours of Tuesday in the Hyatt Regency hotel bar in Birmingham, which was a popular venue for conference attenders. Burns has denied any wrongdoing.

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Liz Truss approval ratings reach new lows after Tory conference

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PM’s -47 net rating in Opinium poll worse than Boris Johnson’s at height of Partygate scandal

Liz Truss’s personal ratings are now even worse than those recorded for Boris Johnson at the height of the Partygate scandal, according to another Observer poll which will cause alarm among Tory MPs.

Truss’s personal approval rating of -47 is now the worst ever recorded for a prime minister in an Opinium poll for the Observer. It is a worse rating than that recorded for Johnson during Partygate and Theresa May in the weeks before her resignation.

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Mel B challenges sacked Tory minister over ‘what you said to me in lift’

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Former Spice Girl, who attended Tory conference, makes apparent online criticism of Conor Burns

Mel B has made an apparent criticism of sacked Tory minister Conor Burns’s behaviour during a conversation with her at the Conservative party conference.

Burns was asked to step down from his role as a minister of state in the trade department and had the Conservative whip withdrawn pending an investigation into an allegation of “serious misconduct” on Friday, Downing Street said. He later denied having ever met the former Spice Girl singer.

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Boris Johnson took accommodation worth £10,000 from Tory donor’s wife

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Register of MPs’ interests shows ex-PM accepted gift from Lady Carole Bamford, wife of JCB chairman, Lord Anthony Bamford

Boris Johnson accepted free accommodation worth £10,000 from the wife of the leading Tory donor who hosted his wedding party this summer, it has emerged.

The updated register of MPs’ interests shows that the former prime minister accepted a £10,000 gift from Lady Carole Bamford, for “concessionary use of accommodation for me and my family in September”.

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Liz Truss meets European leaders in Prague as Irish deputy PM says NI protocol ‘a little too strict’ – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can find our latest political coverage here

In his interview with LBC Jake Berry, the Tory chairman, was asked if he was channelling When Harry Met Sally when he described Liz Truss as the “Yes, yes, yes prime minister” in his speech to the conference yesterday. (Robert Hutton is very funny about this, and much else, in his sketch for the Critic.) Berry said he was referring to Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister when he delivered that line.

In the same interview, Berry revealed that his joke-making has not improved since yesterday. Talking about the conference in general, Berry said:

I think colleagues saw yesterday that when the going gets tough, the Truss gets going.

I do think my language was a bit clumsy in that regard and I regret it.

The point I was making ... is that the government needs to go for growth to ensure that it can grow the economy and Britain can get a pay rise. You don’t have to tell me how hard people graft in this economy. I know how hard people work.

We’ve got to wait until those figures are available … You simply cannot make a decision on figures you do not currently have.

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Suella Braverman speaks out against likely UK trade deal with India

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New home secretary objects to increasing visas for Indians and critiques predecessor’s attempt to return overstayers

Suella Braverman has again risked upsetting No 10 after saying she has “reservations” about Britain’s trade deal with India because it could increase immigration to the UK.

Liz Truss said she wants to sign a trade agreement with India by Diwali at the end of this month. The Indian government is demanding an increase in work and study visas for Indian nationals and earlier this year Boris Johnson said the agreement would lead to increased immigration.

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‘Arghhhhhhhhh’: the 10 angriest Tories at Conservative conference

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Never have so many angry things been said by so many Tories about each other in a single day as on Monday. We rank the 10 most irate MPs

This piece is extracted from our First Edition newsletter. To sign up, click here.


The Tories assembled in Birmingham are fighting over lots of things. They’re fighting over the 45p tax U-turn, and the prospect of a swingeing benefit cut, and whether or not it’s OK for the Home Secretary to accuse backbenchers of mounting a coup. But above all, deep down, they’re mostly fighting about whether Liz Truss has got what it takes. There may never have been so many angry things said by so many Tories about each other in a single day as there were on Monday. It’s not the ideal introduction for the most important speech of Liz Truss’ life.

Some of them are angrily making headlines by saying exactly what they bloody well think; others are angrily making headlines by telling the first lot to put a sock in it. The mood is a little delirious. An amazing video appeared on Tuesday of at least three people appearing to sleep soundly through health secretary Thérèse Coffey’s speech in the main hall, but on Wednesday morning I find myself wondering if they weren’t obscure backbenchers who somebody had poisoned.

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Senior MP urges Tories not to quit and gives Liz Truss until Christmas

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Exclusive: Tobias Ellwood said the party should focus on sticking to its sensible and fiscally responsible roots

Tobias Ellwood has urged moderate Conservatives not to leave the party as he suggested Liz Truss has until Christmas to turn her troubled premiership around.

The senior MP, who chairs parliament’s defence select committee but was stripped of the Tory whip in July, said the party should stick to its sensible and fiscally responsible roots.

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Liz Truss refuses to commit to raising benefits in line with inflation – UK politics live

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Prime minister says she is committed to ‘supporting most vulnerable’ but stresses need to be ‘fiscally responsible’

Truss was asked about her views on what she has described as “obstacles to growth” replying that she was intent on pressing ahead with plans to remove “top-down” housing targets.

It’s wrong that how houses are built is centrally directed. Instead we are setting up new investment zones, which are places that people want homes to be built and they want businesses to be built. It’s an approach based more on local consent than centrally based targets.

That is the balance that she needs to strike. Yes there is more that we can do to get the highly skilled people we need in our economy but we also need to train more people.

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Liz Truss refuses to rule out real-terms benefits cuts

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PM facing fresh battle with MPs as she declines to commit to raising benefits in line with inflation

Liz Truss has refused to commit to raising benefits in line with inflation, amid a fresh battle with MPs over cuts to spending including concern from among her cabinet.

The prime minister said pensions would rise in line with inflation, having committed to the pensions “triple lock” during the leadership campaign. But she said people on welfare benefits were in a “different situation” and said they were more able to look for more work.

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Kwasi Kwarteng set to address Tory conference with authority on the line after 45% tax rate U-turn – UK politics live

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Chancellor expected to give changed address after confirming plan to axe top rate of income tax has been scrapped

Q: Where does this leave your credibility?

Kwarteng says he has been in parliament for 12 years. He says ministers do sometimes change their minds.

I decided, along with the the prime minister, not to proceed [with the policy].

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US pollster urges Tories to ditch culture wars

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Frank Luntz tells Tory conference meeting weaponising such issues is likely to ‘win an election but lose the country’

A US pollster who advised Boris Johnson has delivered an impassioned plea for Tories to stop weaponising culture war issues, warning them they would “win an election but lose the country”.

“It guarantees divisions for generations and it can get you elected but you will hate the result,” Frank Luntz told a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference, which was packed out with Tory activists and elected officials eager to hear his advice on language and campaigning.

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Truss picked ‘cronies off backbenches’ for cabinet, says Heseltine

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Former Tory ‘big beast’ says PM needs to ‘appoint ministers who know what the heck they’re doing’

Liz Truss packed her cabinet with “cronies off the backbenches” rather than competent ministers with a range of views, and appeared to have no coherent plan behind her mini-budget, Michael Heseltine has said.

The ex-deputy prime minister and former senior Conservative, who sits in the Lords as an unaffiliated peer after being suspended from the party in 2019, also predicted that Truss’s chances of winning the next election were “looking pretty bleak”.

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Unions brand bid to exempt firms with up 500 staff from new rules ‘reckless’

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Government says change would apply to all new regulations and it would look to raise in threshold in future

Ministers are seeking to exempt firms with up to 500 staff from new regulations, with unions warning that they could soon be spared from reporting on gender pay gaps and executive pay ratios in a “cynical and reckless” move.

Liz Truss announced on Sunday that companies with up to 500 staff would now be treated the same way as small businesses with fewer than 50 staff, which are exempt when new regulations are introduced.

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Tory MPs threaten rebellion against Liz Truss over mini-budget

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Party conference overshadowed by fears that refusing to do a U-turn on tax and spending cuts will kill off election chances

Liz Truss is struggling to persuade Conservative MPs to back her controversial mini-budget, with some even threatening all-out rebellion amid fears that they will once again become known as the “nasty party”.

The prime minister faces with a rising drumbeat of discontent that is overshadowing the Tory conference after she insisted she would “stand by” her plans to cut the top rate of income tax and ram through public spending cuts.

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Truss’s mini-budget looks likely to cost the Tories the next election | Pippa Crerar

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Tory MPs fear voters see them as the nasty party again after the prime minister refused to rethink tax cuts for the rich

Liz Truss has long channelled Margaret Thatcher – echoing her rhetoric, her free market instincts and even her clothes – but as the Tory conference kicked off in Birmingham on Sunday many in her party were hoping that she would relinquish ambitions to be the next Iron Lady and drop her mini-budget plans.

There were early glimmers of hope. In an article for the Sun, she admitted her proposals would cause “short term disruption” but that she had an “iron grip” on the country’s finances. Then she told the BBC she understood public concerns. “I do accept we should have laid the ground better,” she said.

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Kwasi Kwarteng reportedly spoke of austerity cuts at champagne party on mini-budget day

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Jake Berry says event on mini-budget day, where guests allegedly told Kwasi Kwarteng to stick to his policies, was ‘not unusual’

The Conservative party chair has defended the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and said that people who attended a private champagne reception with him on the day he delivered his mini-budget should be “lauded” as Britain’s leading entrepreneurs.

Jake Berry said the drinks reception was not unusual and that, along with hedge fund managers, property developers had also been present.

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Tory MP Steve Baker apologies to Ireland and EU for behaviour during Brexit

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Northern Ireland minister says he and colleagues had not always respected others’ ‘legitimate interests’

Steve Baker – arch Brexiter and one of the Conservative party’s fiercest campaigners to get the UK out of the EU – has apologised to Ireland and Brussels for the way he and some of his colleagues behaved over the past six years.

Baker told the Tory party conference that he and others in the party had not shown respect to the “legitimate interests” of Ireland or the EU during the campaign to leave the bloc.

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Michael Gove says Liz Truss’s tax cut plans ‘not Conservative’

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Influential former minister hints he will not vote for mini-budget measures, in blow to PM

Michael Gove said Liz Truss’s programme of tax cuts was deeply concerning and “not Conservative”, and hinted he would not vote for them, in a major blow to the prime minister’s authority.

Gove, who was removed as levelling up secretary before Boris Johnson left No 10 but remains a hugely influential Tory MP, said he could not back Truss’s abolition of the top 45p rate of tax, or the removal of the cap on bankers’ bonuses.

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Liz Truss admits she should have ‘laid ground better’ before mini-budget and says cabinet not consulted about 45% top rate tax cut – live

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Latest updates: PM vows to press ahead with mini-budget plans and dismisses objections to top rate of tax being axed

Q: Are you absolutely committed to getting rid of the 45% rate of tax?

Yes, says Truss.

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