Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson didn’t implode in the BBC debate. So for him, it’s a win

I’m not sure we learned terribly much this from the rather noisy BBC debate this evening. Each Tory candidate had rehearsed the answers so well that they sounded like pull-string dolls at times.  If you watched Ch4’s debate on Sunday – conducted along the lines of its old Fifteen-to-One gameshow – you’ll have heard many of these lines before. Michael Gove strong on his own reforming record and Corbyn-baiting, not so strong on the economy. Sajid Javid a bit more willing to use his biography as strategy, at one point having his rival candidates agree to an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Tory party (although I'm not sure how far this will endear him to the Tories whose votes he is seeking).

James Forsyth

Stewart takes on all the candidates in a chaotic BBC debate

Tonight’s BBC debate was a chaotic affair, with the candidates regularly talking over each other. There was no defining moment. Boris Johnson avoided slipping on any banana skins while the other candidates made a concerted – and fairly effective – effort to check Rory Stewart’s progress. Before the debate, there had been much talk about Rory Stewart taking on Boris Johnson. But in the end, Stewart ended up taking on all the other candidates. He accused them of promising things that can’t be delivered. While this made him distinctive, I suspect it is an approach that won’t have gone down well with the Tory MPs he needs to persuade to switch to him in the coming rounds. The other candidates pushed back on Stewart too.

Steerpike

Watch: voter says Rory Stewart is ‘completely out of touch’

After the second round of voting in the Tory leadership race earlier today, which saw Dominic Raab booted out of the contest, it seemed as if renegade challenger and International Development Secretary Rory Stewart had all the momentum heading into the televised BBC leadership debate tonight. But, while Stewart may be winning over his colleagues in the Commons, it appears that he might need to do more to win back Tory voters who have defected to the Brexit party. As part of a series of questions asked by ordinary members of the public, James from Oxford explained that he'd reluctantly left the Conservative party recently to vote for the Brexit party, and asked all the candidates in the studio what they would do to lower the tax burden for people like him.

Isabel Hardman

How should the Tory leadership candidates deal with Rory Stewart?

Now that Rory Stewart has gone from joke candidate to probable former spy who has a shot of making it to the final two of the Tory leadership contest, how do the other candidates deal with him? As James explains, Stewart’s best hope of getting through the next rounds is to bleed votes from Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt. Those two have in the past few days turned their attention from Boris Johnson and onto Stewart as they fear that he has a real chance of making it into the final two.

James Forsyth

Rory Stewart makes the most gains – but can he eat into Hunt and Gove’s support?

Rory Stewart made the biggest gains in the second ballot of the Tory leadership contest. Not only did he get over the 33 votes needed to stay in the race, but he also put on more votes than any other candidate—going from 19 to 37. But with Dominic Raab knocked out, the votes that are most clearly up for grabs are, generally, those of hard-line Brexiteers. It is hard to imagine many, if any, of Raab’s 30 supporters moving to Stewart. That means that if Stewart is to keep up his momentum he is going to have to take votes from the other Cabinet candidates—in particular, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove. Tonight’s TV debate will now be more dramatic than expected. But as I said yesterday, there is a danger for Rory Stewart in being seen to go in too hard on Boris Johnson.

Katy Balls

Raab’s departure is good news for Boris

The results of the second ballot are in and it's Dominic Raab who has been knocked out of the race. Boris Johnson cemented his lead going from 114 votes to 126. Brexiteer Raab meanwhile failed to win the 33 votes required – only mustering 30. As for the Cabinet candidates, there is still little difference in support between the top candidates. Rory Stewart managed the largest increase going from 19 votes in the first round to 37: Michal Gove: 41 Jeremy Hunt: 46 Sajid Javid: 33 Boris Johnson: 126 Dominic Raab: 30 Rory Stewart: 37 So, what does the result mean for the overall contest? Johnson continues to look unassailable.

Robert Peston

Labour could fully back a second referendum tomorrow

Tomorrow at 1.30pm, Labour’s shadow cabinet, in a special Brexit session, may move towards making the historic decision to call for a referendum in 'all circumstances' – that is, on any Brexit deal agreed by parliament or on a no-deal Brexit. That said, sources close to Jeremy Corbyn caution me against expecting any momentous announcement tomorrow. By contrast, shadow cabinet members tell me that Corbyn is inexorably – if slowly – shifting Labour to become the referendum party, although one senior party member tells me a device will be found to delay the shift. What gives credence to the idea that there will be a decisive move towards a confirmatory ballot is that Andrew Fisher, Corbyn’s policy adviser, has written a paper recommending that.

John Connolly

Boris wins – but Rory Stewart gains most support in latest Tory vote

So much for Boris Johnson running away with this early. After the second round of voting amongst Tory MPs, he's still easily ahead. But the other votes are spread so evenly that no fewer than five of the candidates have made it through to the third round of the contest. Only Dominic Raab has been knocked out - his supporters are now likely to move to Boris, now the most Brexity candidate in the race. As was widely expected, Boris Johnson came top in this ballot, winning the backing of 126 of his colleagues in the Parliamentary Conservative party, but this was just 12 more votes than in the first round. There had been talk of him getting more than 150 today. He was followed by Jeremy Hunt who received 46 votes - just three more than last time.

Isabel Hardman

We expect our MPs to be dysfunctional, and then complain when they are

Stella Creasy’s complaint that as an MP she will be unable to take maternity leave is just the latest piece of evidence of Parliament’s dysfunctional nature. The Labour MP has tried - in vain - to get extra funding from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority so she can appoint someone to cover her work while she is off. The pay and expenses regulator says MPs do not officially take maternity leave, and there is no formal system for covering for them when they are off with their baby. This might be excused as a bizarre anachronism from the times when there were no women in parliament were it not for the fact that Ipsa was only established a decade ago after the expenses scandal.

Nick Cohen

Boris Johnson is Theresa May in drag

Boris Johnson seems the opposite of Theresa May. The worst thing she ever did was run through a wheat field. The worst thing he ever did remains open to debate. But dark suspicious prompted Charles Moore, whom older readers will remember as a defender of family values, to ask: 'Does it matter if our future prime minister is considered by some to be a sex maniac?' (Not if it’s a sex maniac Moore supports, apparently.) May is withdrawn. Johnson is outgoing. May will tell you how many children she has. Johnson won’t. May is viewed by the right as the head of a Remainer conspiracy. Johnson resigned rather than serve in her Vichy regime. As whoever comes after her will be worse, there is a danger of romanticising Theresa May’s premiership.

Ross Clark

Boris should stop Heathrow’s expansion and build the Thames Estuary airport

Heathrow Airport commences the consultation on its third runway plans today with a very big problem on its hands: a man who has threatened to lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop the runway seems very likely to be Prime Minister by the time the consultation has concluded. In theory, the project ought to be dead in the water – although, as Lord Adonis pointed out on the Today programme this morning, that would be to underestimate Boris’ capacity for u-turns. According to some reports, Boris has already assured fans of Heathrow expansion that he will respect the decision of Parliament to go ahead with the project. But to take that at face value, too, underestimates Boris’ ability to make simultaneous, mutually-exclusive promises to different audiences.

Katy Balls

What would be a good result for Boris in the second ballot?

What counts as a good result for Boris Johnson in the second ballot? The former foreign secretary has already hit the magic number (105 MPs) that ought to guarantee a candidate a place in the final two – winning 114 votes in the first round. It follows that the pressure is on in some quarters for Johnson to build on this momentum when MPs vote for a second time this afternoon. In terms of stamping his authority, there are Johnson supporters who would like to see him win the support of half of the Parliamentary party – thereby providing him with a strong mandate going forward. The Johnson campaign is keen to play down expectations - with some suggesting they could even lose votes. This is because there is talk of lending votes to rival candidates to get them to the next round.

James Kirkup

Boris Johnson should want to face Rory Stewart

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to look at recent media coverage of the Tory leadership race and conclude that Bois Johnson is a bit scared of Rory Stewart. Johnson’s fiends and surrogates have been training their fire on Stewart since the weekend, sometimes subtly and sometimes not. This started when Matt Hancock dropped out, putting his backers in play. Then Stewart’s performance in Sunday’s Channel 4 debate convinced a number of his colleagues that he could survive the second ballot and thus qualify for a BBC debate tonight. A debate that Johnson has reluctantly agreed to be in. Reluctantly because the entire Johnson strategy in the race is about avoiding engagements where he could be bloodied. As the overwhelming favourite, this is his to lose.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Sajid Javid: send me into the final two and I’ll “make a better Boris”

At the hustings held by the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs this evening, the question wasn’t who was going to win but who should be sent to put Boris Johnson through his paces before he wins. Word is that Team Boris is lending about 15 votes to Jeremy Hunt, who he'd most like to go up against - either today, or in later voting rounds. Boris is understood to have over 120 supporters now - more than the next three put together - so he could lend 40 votes to Hunt if he wanted. But he is more likely to keep the number low so the vote-lending isn't obvious. There’s even talk that he’ll win by such a big majority that no other candidate would get above the 33 l-vote threshold today. It's possible. But deeply unlikely.

Robert Peston

How will the leadership candidates solve the Irish border question?

At the hacks’ hustings for the Tory leadership candidates, I asked the five who could be bothered to be held to account by your inky fingered servants a really boring question. Would they accept the definition of a 'hard border' on the island of Ireland written into the December joint agreement between the UK and the EU, which underpins the backstop plan in the Withdrawal Agreement? The reason this matters is that the joint agreement says there is a commitment to avoid 'a hard border including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls', and the Withdrawal Agreement says 'any future arrangements [for Ireland] must be compatible with these overarching requirements.

James Kirkup

The problem with Theresa May’s desire for a legacy

In less than a month, Theresa May’s premiership will be history. If she is remembered at all, it will mainly be for Brexit. She took on a near-impossible task, made it harder (her misjudged ‘red lines’ from autumn 2016 will always haunt her), and finally failed at it. That had many consequences, not least the neglect of domestic policy. The burning injustices she so memorably listed on the Downing Street step are still blazing away. Poor social mobility, health inequality, racial bias in the justice system, a dysfunctional housing market and poor provision for mental health problems – all remain unresolved.

Steerpike

The Brexit party rallies behind Rory Stewart

It seems like half of Twitter has fallen in love with Rory Stewart and his whirlwind campaign to become prime minister. But recently, it's not just centrist swing-voters who've been swept off their feet by the International Development Secretary. Certain figures on the pro-no deal side of the Brexit divide now seem to have fallen under Stewart's spell and are issuing full-throated endorsements of him. Nigel Farage invited Stewart onto his LBC show yesterday and hailed him for having 'set alight' the Tory leadership process, and praised his 'terrific campaign'.

James Forsyth

Why the TV debates could break Rory Stewart’s momentum

With Boris Johnson having all but booked his place in the final two, the most interesting question of the Tory leadership contest right now is whether Rory Stewart can get the 33 votes he needs to get through the next round of voting. If he does, he makes it to Tuesday night’s BBC debate. At which point, Stewart would have the chance to take on Boris Johnson directly. Some, including former Downing Street staffers, think that this clash could even propel Stewart into the final two. But I think it could actually break Stewart’s momentum. Why, because a lot of Tory MPs fear too much blue-on-blue action and wouldn’t want the members round to turn into a no-holds-barred contest.

Steerpike

Sajid Javid turns on the Old Etonians

So far in the Tory leadership contests, the candidates have spent a lot of time bashing the frontrunner Boris Johnson. However, with Johnson a sure thing for the final two, the real contest is currently between the other five leadership contenders, hoping to win second place to get on the members' ballot. Hearing that battle cry, Sajid Javid used today's lobby hustings to go on the offensive against his rival Rory Stewart. With Stewart building momentum over the past couple of days, Javid took the opportunity to warn MPs against selecting two Old Etonians to go to the members, while helpfully drawing attention to his own more humble beginnings.

Katy Balls

Matt Hancock’s Boris endorsement irks One Nation Tories

Is Boris Johnson’s route to No. 10 now unstoppable? The former foreign secretary has more MPs backing him than any other candidate and over the weekend bagged the support of two leadership dropouts - Esther McVey and Matt Hancock. Hancock’s support for Johnson is the most surprising - just a week or so ago the Health Secretary used an interview with the Financial Times to take a swipe at Johnson by declaring ‘f—- “f—- business”’ in response to his infamous ‘f—- business’ comment. It follows that many are reading Hancock’s endorsement as a sign that even Johnson’s critics have come around to the former mayor of London. However, not everyone in the Tory party agrees.