Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
17 min listen
On this week's episode: Leo McKinstry on the worrying rise of apostrophe laws (0:31). Mary Wakefield on why we should resist Stonewall’s gospel (07:02) and Melanie McDonagh on the lost art of letterheads (13.33).Presented and produced by Natasha Feroze.
As the Tory leadership race unfolds, there's plenty of votes up for grabs. Both Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch are competing for the Tory right but there's one group of voters which neither seems especially interested in. LGBT+ Conservatives, one of the biggest groupings within the Tory party, sent out a survey to each candidate this week, asking for their views on related policy areas. Patrons of the group include Ruth Davidson, Andy Street and David Mundell. Unfortunately, while Penny Mordaunt, Tom Tugendhat and Rishi Sunak all chose to respond, neither Badenoch or Truss – both of whom have served as ministers for equalites – chose not to respond, despite the surveys being sent on Monday. Will that make a difference when it comes to next week's voting?
Having urged her supporters to back Liz Truss yesterday, Suella Braverman has now been forced to, er, do the same again today. Team Truss are doing their damnedest to try to lock up the right-wing vote by sending out leading figures like Lord Frost and Simon Clarke to urge rival candidates to stand aside. Unfortunately for the Foreign Secretary, thus far the Badenoch camp seem noticeably reluctant to do just that. While not all of her supporters still think she could make the final two, others have their doubts about Truss and her electoral prowess. Braverman's latest appeal therefore is an attempt to remind right-wingers that, unless they unite sharpish, the final two presented to party members are likely to be Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt.
Ahead of tonight’s Channel 4 debate, the five remaining Tory leadership candidates appeared on Zoom for the first public hustings, hosted by the ConservativeHome website. But none really secured a knockout blow, owing in part to the format of the debate – and the reluctance of each to launch into out and out attacks. Instead, the main fight was on policy, not personality, following some hostile briefings in newspapers over the past 48 hours. And the most ambitious candidate on the policy front was Liz Truss, keen to regain momentum after finishing third behind Penny Mordaunt on the first two ballots.
Is it all over for Mario Draghi’s recovery government? His attempted resignation yesterday – which was rejected by President Sergio Mattarella – opens up a highly uncertain chapter in the most serious crisis the Italian Prime Minister has faced. There’s little desire from anyone to see Draghi leave and usher in new elections, at least at this stage. But there is a high risk of miscalculation, thanks to the overlapping red lines the protagonists in this drama have set themselves. Giuseppe Conte’s Five Star Movement yesterday decided not to support the government on a cost-of-living bill vote in the Senate – by not turning up. That meant that the measure still passed, but without the party’s assent.
What is the most patronising response to Scottish nationalism? Received wisdom among the political, media and academic establishments north and south of the border says it is Unionism. Or rather, the sort of Unionism that says the constitution is reserved, Westminster should keep refusing another referendum, and perhaps should even legislate to inhibit or prohibit secession. I disagree. That sort of Unionism is the only one that respects nationalism. It listens to what the SNP has to say, takes its articles of faith at face value and, being of the opposite point of view, works to defeat the nationalists’ objectives. It is honourable intellectual combat. No, the most condescending response to the SNP comes from a particular kind of devolutionism.
How many promises should a candidate make in a leadership contest? If you’re Penny Mordaunt, the answer appears to be very few. The trade minister has upset her leadership rivals by becoming the surprise bookies’ favourite in the contest. It means the knives are out when it comes to her efforts – with figures such as Lord Frost criticising Mordaunt and claiming she is not up to the job of prime minister. What was most striking from Mordaunt’s interview was how little detail she had when it came to her grand plans In a bid to silence her critics, Mordaunt has today given her first broadcast interview to Sky News.
Oh dear. It seems bumbling 'Uncle Joe' has done it again. Fresh from his Holocaust gaffe, President Biden has now decided to offend not one, but two allies, when he gave his thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict. On a visit to a hospital in East Jerusalem today, President Biden made remarks that were picked up by the travelling American press. He compared Israel's contemporary treatment towards Palestine to that of Britain's historic attitude towards Catholics in Ireland, saying that: ...the background of my family is Irish American. And we have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years for 400 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The clouds have cleared, the fog has lifted, clarity has arrived. The first reaction to finding out Penny Mordaunt was well ahead in the polls and the favourite to win the leadership contest – ‘who again?’ – has passed. But after reading a little of her work, I am now convinced that Penny Mordaunt would make a great leader – of the Labour party. For the Conservatives, she would be a complete disaster. There is little in Mordaunt’s public record that suggests she is particularly amenable to Conservative views. The core thrust of her book (written with Chris Lewis) is that Britain needs to be ‘modernised’ – a word that to conservatives generally signals ‘made more amenable to Blairites’. The Houses of Parliament?
10 min listen
The ERG's favoured candidate, Suella Braverman, dropped out of the Tory leadership race last night. This morning, ERG chair Mark Francois said that he wanted the 60-strong group to now back Liz Truss. Will they? And looking ahead to tonight's Channel 4 debate, why does the format most benefit Kemi Badenoch?Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls. Produced by Max Jeffery.
He has the widest support among MPs. He easily beats any other candidate with the voters, and is the only one consistently ahead of Sir Kier Starmer in the polls. He has experience, a fluent manner on TV, and as his slick campaign has reminded everyone, he is the most professional campaigner among the politicians left in the race. Against an often underwhelming, inexperienced group of rivals, the former Chancellor Rishi Sunak should be a certainty to become leader of the Conservative party, and so Prime Minister, by the autumn. There is just one catch: his stubborn attachment to raising corporation tax – when in truth, ditching that policy would be the one sure way of rescuing his stumbling campaign.
Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt were both committed Brexiters in the 2016 referendum campaign – and both took career risks to support leaving the EU, against the wishes of the then-Prime Minister David Cameron. By contrast Liz Truss campaigned enthusiastically to stay in the EU (see for example the below forceful speech to the 2016 Food and Drink Industry dinner where she makes a powerful industrial case for staying in the EU). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0cNPM4j1gQ It is striking therefore that Steve Baker and Suella Braverman (supported by the disenfranchised David Frost) prefer the zeal of the after-the-event convert to Brexit, namely Liz Truss, to the other candidates who were always Brexiters.
And then there were five. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat – one of these names will become Britain's next prime minister. Ahead of tonight's Channel 4 debate there's much excited chatter about who will survive the final rounds of MPs' voting and be presented to the final two. With more than 100 backers, Sunak looks set to make it to the membership: the question is who will face him? After Mordaunt bagged second yesterday with 83 votes, there's now increasing concern among some right-wing Tories that a candidate from their wing of the party won't make it to the last two. In such circumstances then it's hardly surprising to hear calls for a pact between Liz Truss (who got 64 votes) and Kemi Badenoch (49 votes).
Suella Braverman is now backing Liz Truss, as is Braverman’s campaign wing man Steve Baker. Given the discipline of the ERG whipping operation, this should mean that the bulk of Braverman’s 27 supporters move to Truss. After being knocked out, Braverman had said she would consider Truss’s Remain vote in 2016. But, ultimately, that turned out not to be an obstacle for Braverman. Kemi Badenoch, a Brexiteer, was thought to be the other contender for the Braverman endorsement. She told Iain Dale tonight that she is ‘disappointed’ with the decision: ‘I know people are going to support the person most likely to give them a job... I'm trying to do something different.
The Online Safety Bill has been postponed. It should now be killed off for good. Not only is it bad for business, bad for free speech, and – by attacking encryption – bad for online safety, it now seems that there is a possibility, however remote, that the minister responsible for the bill doesn’t fully understand what it actually does. After it was announced that the bill’s passage through parliament would be put on hold next week, leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch welcomed the delay by describing the bill as being ‘in no fit state to become law’, adding that ‘we should not be legislating for hurt feelings.
Few MPs have had such an inglorious and brief career as Imran Ahmad Khan. Elected in December 2019, he was charged in June 2021 with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008. After having the whip duly removed by the Tories, he was subsequently tried and found guilty in April 2022, for which he was jailed for 18 months. That in turn caused a by-election in his Red Wall Wakefield seat: a by-election which swung so convincingly towards Labour that it prompted the no-confidence vote in Boris Johnson which precipitated the end of his premiership. In a career full of disgrace though Mr S has uncovered what may be Ahmad Khan's lasting legacy.
Does Penny Mordaunt know what she's getting herself into? One of her most striking promises is to give MPs something called 'social capital pots’: cash to spend in their constituencies. They are part of her attempt to soothe colleagues by describing them as ‘people who want to serve’ – and to weaken the power of the Treasury. 'I want to give you more agency to serve your community,' she said. While these pots sound unremarkable, Mordaunt would be significantly changing what an MP actually does This is a fascinating idea, and not just because it flatters MPs' egos. It's more than the 'pork barrel politics' some critics have alleged of the idea, because Penny Mordaunt would be significantly changing what an MP actually does.
Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch have both fought impressive campaigns. They were both relatively unknown before the contest and they've significantly enhanced their reputations. But they are both so far behind it would take a miracle for either of them to reach the magic 120 votes needed to enter the final run-off where members pick the leader from two chosen by MPs (Badenoch needs 71, and Tugendhat 88 – when there are at best just 27 of Braverman's former supporters going begging).
12 min listen
The Tory briefing war continues to get underway, with David Frost launching a vicious broadside at Penny Mordaunt on talkRadio this morning. 'She wasn't fully accountable or visible. Sometimes I didn't even know where she was', Lord Frost said.On the episode, Cindy Yu talks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about the latest round of the leadership ballot, where Suella Braverman has been culled, and look ahead to the weekend consisting of two TV debates, which present a make-or-break opportunity for relatively unknown candidates like Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat.
47 min listen
In this week’s episode:The knives are out in the Tory leadership fight, who looks likely to make the final two?Fraser Nelson writes this week’s cover piece about the Tory leadership race. He’s joined by the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson (0.49).Also this week:Mary Wakefield challenges Stonewall's guidelines for parents with trans children. One of these parents is Tammy Plunkett, a former nurse, life coach and author of Beyond Pronouns (21.43).And finally: James Ball reviews Matthew Ball’s The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionise Everything for the magazine this week. He is joined by Sid Venkataramakrishnan from the Financial Times to discuss the future of the Metaverse (36.