Former home secretary finishes behind Mel Stride after only securing 14 votes
PMQs is starting soon. Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Kemi Badenoch is the clear favourite of Conservative members for next leader, and will be very hard to beat if she makes it into the final ballot of two, according to a survey by ConservativeHome.
Continue reading...Former home secretary got two fewer votes than Mel Stride, while Robert Jenrick leads race to succeed Rishi Sunak
Priti Patel has been knocked out of the race to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative party leader in the first round of voting by Tory MPs.
The former home secretary received 14 votes from her colleagues, leaving her two behind the fifth-placed candidate, Mel Stride.
Continue reading...Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly both reject idea of leaving European Court of Human Rights to revive Rwanda plan
Two frontrunners to be Conservative party leader have criticised their rivals’ promises to leave the European court of human rights (ECHR) as the contest turns combative with days to go until the first MP is eliminated.
Kemi Badenoch, the shadow communities secretary, and James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary, both rejected the idea of leaving the ECHR on Monday despite calls from some of their colleagues to do so.
Continue reading...PM says he will not take lectures from previous government as Kemi Badenoch launches Tory leadership campaign
Kemi Badenoch is speaking now. She says she wants to talk about the future.
She was born in the UK, but “grew up under socialism”, she says (referring to her childhood in Nigeria).
Labour have no ideas. At best, they are announcing things we have already done, and at their worst, they are clueless, irresponsible and dishonest.
They are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public about the state of Britain’s finances, placing political donors into civil service jobs, pretending that they have no plans to cut pensioner benefits before the election and then doing exactly that to cover the cost of pay rises for the unions with no promise of reform, But their model of spend, spend, spend is broken, and they don’t know what to do, and this will only lead to even more cynicism in politics.
Continue reading...Shadow minister will launch leadership campaign with call to think afresh and move on from landslide election defeat
Kemi Badenoch will say the Conservatives must do more than criticise Labour in order to win the next general election, as she launches her campaign to lead the party.
Potential dividing lines with her leadership rivals already appear to be forming, after Robert Jenrick said on Sunday he would oppose Labour’s “declaration of war on the middle classes”.
Continue reading...Badenoch and Jenrick are the bookies’ favourites but the party’s reduced ranks make the numbers extremely tight
When the Conservative MPs who remain return to Westminster, they will briefly seem like some of the most popular people in SW1. With the party so reduced in numbers, over the next few days there will be a furious wooing of those who have not yet declared for one of the six leadership candidates.
“The race is wide open,” one senior Tory said. “There are barely any public endorsements so no one can tell who is the favourite. The public polling has been all over the place. Often they seem to be just based on who has paid for it.”
Continue reading...Tory MPs will vote next week in a series of ballots to narrow the field down to four candidates
Conservative MPs will start whittling down the leadership candidates to four next week, the first stage in a long contest from which a winner will not emerge until 2 November. Here are the six candidates in the running to replace Rishi Sunak.
Continue reading...Rayner says housing target system will raise number of homes planned to 370,000 and confirmed targets will be mandatory
Balls, who, of course, is a former Labour cabinet minister, and a former shadow chancellor, questions whether Reeves is right to suggest that Jeremy Hunt is wholly to blame for the black hole. He says that other cabinet ministers and departments drew up the spending plans that she says were unfunded.
Reeves repeats the point she has been making all morning about how the public were misled. (See 8.06am.)
Continue reading...Chancellor suggests budget, on 30 October, will involve tax rises and cuts to spending and benefits
Downing Street has refused to comment on a report saying junior doctors are being offered a pay rise worth about 20% over two years.
In a story for the Times, Steven Swinford reports:
The British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors committee has recommended an offer that includes a backdated pay rise of 4.05 per cent for 2023-24, on top of an existing increase of between 8.8 per cent and 10.3 per cent.
Junior doctors will be given a further pay rise of 6 per cent for 2024-25, which will be topped up by a consolidated £1,000 payment. This is equivalent to a pay rise of between 7 per cent and 9 per cent.
As we’ve said before, we’re committed to working to find a solution, resolving this dispute, but I can’t get into detailed running commentary on negotiations.
We’ve been honest with the public and the sector about the economic circumstances we face. But the government is determined to do the hard work necessary to finally bring these strikes to an end.
Continue reading...Houchen says party must avoid seeming self-indulgent as other Conservatives attack Liz Truss over new intervention
The Conservatives should not have a protracted leadership debate as it would be a “waste of time” and could risk appearing self-indulgent, the Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen has said.
His comments came as former Conservative parliamentary candidates rounded on the former prime minister Liz Truss, who has attacked the leadership of Rishi Sunak in the failed general election campaign by saying he had trashed her legacy in office.
Continue reading...Shadow home secretary calls for unity in opposition, after comments from Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch
James Cleverly has called for the Conservative party to unite in opposition, as the party heads into what is likely to be a bitter leadership campaign.
The shadow home secretary warned his party not to descend into infighting, after explosive interventions from his fellow leadership contenders Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman.
Continue reading...Andrew Mitchell becomes shadow foreign secretary and Kemi Badenoch moves to communities in new lineup
David Cameron has left Rishi Sunak’s frontbench as the Conservatives unveiled an interim shadow ministerial team ahead of a party leadership race.
The party said Lord Cameron, the former foreign secretary, and Richard Holden, who chaired the Tories through the disastrous election campaign, had resigned from Sunak’s top team. Andrew Mitchell, who had the largely honorary title of deputy foreign secretary in government, becomes shadow foreign secretary.
Continue reading...Business community decries ‘act of arson’ as one-seventh of trade posts within British consulates in the US are scrapped
America was meant to be Britain’s route to the sunlit uplands of Brexit. Then, after hopes of a free trade deal evaporated, successive Conservative governments have set their sights lower, by trying to forge closer ties with individual US states.
Now the civil servants responsible for delivering those state-level deals have been let go, in what a furious British businessman described as “an act of arson”.
Continue reading...PM again declines to say whether he told Craig Williams in advance about his decision to hold the election in July
Rishi Sunak is returning to the campaign trail on Thursday, PA reports, after a two-day hiatus for the Emperor and Empress of Japan’s state visit and preparations for the final head-to-head debate with Sir Keir Starmer.
With one week to go until polling day, the deepening gambling scandal is still likely to feature heavily when he faces the media during a tour of the East Midlands and Yorkshire.
He is expected to visit a factory in Derbyshire and hold an evening campaign event in Leeds.
Keir Starmer accused Rishi Sunak of using transgender issues “as a political football to divide people” during their head-to-head debate on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Prime minister faces claim Tories are ‘stealing the candlesticks’ on the way out of government
After a passage in his speech attack Labour on familiar grounds, Rishi Sunak also hit out at Reform UK.
[Reform UK] are not on the side of who you think they are.
Reform are standing candidates here in Scotland that are pro independence and anti monarchy.
Continue reading...Grant StClair-Armstrong will appear on the ballot paper but be an independent if he wins against Kemi Badenoch
The Reform UK candidate Grant StClair-Armstrong has resigned after it was discovered he had previously encouraged people to vote for the far-right British National party.
StClair-Armstrong, 71, is standing for election in North West Essex, challenging the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch.
Continue reading...Business secretary is due to meet Czech tycoon to discuss a takeover the Guardian has raised questions about
The business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, is being pressed to question the Royal Mail bidder Daniel Křetínský on his business links, after the Guardian raised questions about a series of controversial global property deals connected to the Czech billionaire’s longtime business partners.
Badenoch is scheduled to meet the tycoon next week to discuss his £3.57bn bid for the 500-year-old institution, which will be subjected to a review under the National Security and Investment Act.
Continue reading...Conservatives would change law so trans people could be excluded from single-sex spaces, if party wins election
Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives will change the Equality Act to rewrite the definition of sex and allow organisations to bar transgender women from single-sex spaces, including hospital wards and sports events.
The party will make clear that the protected characteristic of sex means biological sex, enabling those who wish to bar male-bodied people from organisations or activities to do so.
Continue reading...Latest three-month period to 24 April includes Israeli strike that killed three workers for British World Central Kitchen
UK government ministers have reviewed a further three months of the IDF’s presence in Gaza and found no reason to suspend arms exports to Israel.
The latest review of evidence examined Israel Defense Forces’ behaviour until 24 April, the Foreign Office said in a statement late on Friday.
Continue reading...Defence secretary says MPs must give the PM space as Tory figures appear to be vying for leadership
Conservative MPs looking for a new party leader need to allow Rishi Sunak to “get on with the job”, Grant Shapps has said.
Amid speculation that Sunak could announce an election next week in order to stave off potential challengers for the top job, the defence secretary said now was not “the time or place” to try to put another Conservative leader in place. The party is on its fifth leader since 2015.
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