Category Archives: Tom Tugendhat

Liz Truss under pressure as rivals steal march in Tory leadership race

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Foreign secretary forced to regroup after trailing behind Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt after first round ballot

Tory leadership: live updates

Liz Truss will seek to reinvigorate her campaign to be the next prime minister by promising an “aspiration nation” on Thursday, after she was unexpectedly beaten into third place by Penny Mordaunt in the first round of voting.

Long seen as one of the favourites to be the next Tory party leader, the foreign secretary has the backing of Boris Johnson super-loyalists Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

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Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at first PMQs since resignation – UK politics live

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Latest updates: prime minister takes penultimate PMQs as Conservatives wrangle over who will replace him as leader

Mordaunt says she is committed to the manifesto commitments on defence spending, and meeting the Nato defence pledge.

But she would also take some tasks away from the defence forces, she says. She says she wants to set up a civil defence force to deal with civil defence matters.

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Eight MPs make it on to first Tory leadership ballot as Sajid Javid pulls out of the race – live

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Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat and Nadhim Zahawi garner enough support

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit opportunities minister, and Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, have just told Sky News that they are backing Liz Truss for the Tory leadership.

Rees-Mogg says Truss had been his strongest supporter in cabinet in terms of seeking Brexit opportunities. He went on:

When we discussed taxation, Liz was always opposed to Rishi’s higher taxes. That again is proper Conservatism. And I think she’s got the character to lead the party and the nation.

Liz Truss is the best candidate. She’s a proper Eurosceptic. She will deliver for the voters. She’ll deliver for the voters. She believes in low taxation.

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Rishi Sunak launches bid to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative leader – live

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Former chancellor says it it time to restore trust, rebuild the economy and reunite the country

More now from the 1922 Committee’s Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who says that while in an “ideal world” deputy PM Dominic Raab would have been made caretaker prime minister after Johnson’s speech yesterday, “that ship has sailed”.

I think in an ideal world, Dominic Raab, as deputy prime minister, should have been the caretaker prime minister, but that ship I think has sailed and we must we must now live with the fact that Boris Johnson will be prime minister until a successor can be voted on.

[Johnson] has said very clearly that he won’t be making any major changes during that period. And I think that is a good thing.

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Sunak and Javid in pole position if race for Johnson’s job begins

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A number of senior Tory MPs are preparing leadership bids as Johnson’s hold on power weakens

Leadership jostling kicked off among leading Conservative MPs as Boris Johnson clung to power, with departing cabinet ministers Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid the favourites, and Eurosceptic Steve Baker publicly saying he would “reflect seriously on whether to run”.

Baker, a former chair of the European Research Group who was one of the “Spartan” holdouts against Theresa May’s Brexit deal, was the second to go on the record with leadership ambitions, saying it was “accurate” that he was thinking about a bid.

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