Tory leadership

As Michael Gove finished speaking, the bookmakers have reported that Andrea Leadsom has overtaken the Justice Secretary when it comes to betting on who will be the next Tory leader. Theresa May remains the favourite at 1/3, with Leadsom at 7/2 and Gove at 12/1. Now of course the bookies are not clairvoyants and can get elections—and referendums—very wrong indeed. But these odds reflect the mood in the Tory party, which is currently registering a sense of disbelief that Michael Gove could do something like this. Many senior figures believe that the way he has turned on Boris Johnson is beyond the pale, and are preparing to back Andrea Leadsom, while I understand that a group of former Boris backers are considering declaring their support as a block for Leadsom on Monday too.

So, what happened? As late as yesterday afternoon, Michael Gove was trying to persuade fellow Cabinet Ministers to back Boris Johnson. This morning, he announced that not only that he was running but that ‘Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead’. Hours later, Boris – reeling from this blow – announced that he would not be running. Well, one aspect of all this appears to be Gove's frustration with the way Boris operated. The referendum campaign had led Gove to revise his opinion of Boris, to see him as someone who could be a good Prime Minister. But Gove backers say that, when removed from the discipline of the Vote Leave operation, the old Boris returned.

This morning, Philip Hammond has insisted that those running for the Tory leadership explicitly set out how they intend to leave the EU. The Foreign Secretary told Robert Peston that he wanted to know how they would manage the trade-off between single market access and free movement. Hammond himself appears to favour a version of the Norwegian model; in the single market and accepting free movement. Now, I think we can take this as meaning that Hammond won’t back Boris Johnson. Hammond accused Boris and other Leavers of making ‘contradictory promises’ in the referendum campaign.

The murder of Jo Cox was a moment that leaves you numb; an MP paying the ultimate price for the open society we live in. For the fact that our representatives live and work among us. Despite this tragedy, democracy must go on. By this time next week, the EU referendum will be over. The country will have made up its mind. Whether it is Leave or Remain, the UK will need a period of stability. This means David Cameron staying on as Prime Minister and, as I reveal in The Sun today, plans are already well advanced to ensure that this happens. Boris Johnson has signed a letter saying that Cameron must carry on as Prime Minister regardless of the result; making clear that he isn’t interested in any coup attempt.

Most MPs greet the parliamentary recess with a sense of relief. But Conservatives are welcoming this Easter break like the bell at the end of a boxing match. They are exhausted, tempers must be cooled and they now have a fortnight to think about how best to stop their split over the EU referendum becoming something more permanent and debilitating. Some in the party have long hated their own colleagues more than anyone else ,and they have taken full advantage of the excuse the referendum offers for verbal violence. As one Cabinet minister admits: ‘The extreme 10 per cent on either side of the Tory party absolutely loathe each other.’ At times it has seemed like a bar room brawl in which decade-old scores are settled.

This time last year, Matthew Parris was about the only commentator predicting that the Tories would win a majority. In his Times column today, he says he is now beginning to think that Britain will vote ‘out’ – and he looks at the consequences. Specifically, Cameron’s likely resignation and a summer Tory leadership campaign with Boris Johnson as the favourite. It all might feel a bit premature, but Matthew Parris is one of the most prescient writers in Britain (as Spectator readers know). If Britain does vote out and Cameron quits, then Boris would be the favourite (see graph, below). And then, gloves would come off.

BBC Newsnight sent a crew to North Wiltshire today, to interview voters about the budget. Gladys Pek Yue Macrae, a former Conservative Party branch chairman, said she is fed up because she expected Tory policies to be the result of a Tory majority. Instead, she said, “I find I have a socialist Chancellor. Conservatives are for small government and each individual being responsible for their own destiny. Why do we have a sugar tax? If people should not be eating sugar, then they should not eat sugar.” As her husband, Alan Macrae, put put it: “Surely Conservatism is all about freedom of choice? It’s not about the government telling you what you should and should not do.

George Osborne’s battle to become Conservative leader may well be tougher than the battle he faces from the Labour opposition. The Chancellor delivers his eighth Budget tomorrow with only 31 percent of Britons believing he has done a good job as Chancellor. The backdrop for his set-piece speech is perhaps more troubling: only 26 percent say their personal finances are better off than last year and 31 percent think the economy has improved. And yet, despite this, Osborne and Cameron have a 15 point lead over Labour’s team on economic trust. While Osborne has received many plaudits for moving to the political centre ground after May last year, he has seen only small benefit so far.

Boris Johnson is a slippery fish, but I don’t think Nick Cohen quite captures him in his blog post earlier today. To accuse him of putting career before country in the EU referendum campaign, as Cohen does, is to fall into the trap of viewing politicians too dichotomously, as if they’re all either men and women of conviction or unprincipled opportunists. Boris, like every front rank politician, is a mixture of conviction and careerism, rather than one or the other. Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are both cases in point. Exhibit A in the case for the prosecution is Boris’s decision to join the Leave campaign.

If Boris Johnson had behaved and backed David Cameron's ‘in’ campaign, he would have been foreign secretary by the summer. Instead, he chose to join Michael Gove in the ‘out’ campaign - informing the Prime Minister by text message at 4.40pm shortly before informing the reporters who gathered around his house shortly afterwards. So what does this mean for the race, and do we now have a Tory leadership contest running in parallel to the EU Referendum campaign? James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss this in our latest podcast:- Listen to more episodes of the Spectator podcast here and click here to subscribe through iTunes.

Liam Fox’s new year party at the Carlton Club has become the traditional start to the Tory Party’s year. This year there were 11 Cabinet members including the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Business Secretary and Boris Johnson. I’d say that most of the Tory MPs there are ‘leavers’, who have this week been given permission to campaign freely against a ‘remain’ campaign expected to be led by the Prime Minister.  So in this way, the old Tory wars are about to start again. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today. This is not Eurosceptic vs Europhile. This will be a battle between Eurosceptics: the ones who think the EU can be beaten back from within, and the ones who want out altogether.

At the start of this week, everyone was wondering how George Osborne was going to get out of trouble on tax credits, avoid a deeply damaging row over police cuts, all while still keeping to his surplus target. But thanks to the Office for Budget Responsibility upgrading its forecasts, Osborne was able to scrap the tax credit changes, protect the police budget and maintain his plan for a £10 billion surplus by the end of the parliament. But now, an even bigger challenge awaits Osborne: the EU renegotiation. I argue in my Sun column today that it is now the biggest threat to his chances of becoming Prime Minister.

Oh dear. With Boris Johnson needing to mount a political comeback pretty soon in order to have any hope of stopping George Osborne's bid to be the next Conservative leader, the Mayor of London could do with some good PR. So unfortunately an incident that occurred on his trip to Japan is unlikely to prove helpful. Johnson was filmed knocking over a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy during a 'friendly game' of rugby. With the boy, who is called Toki Sekiguchi, saying that he only felt a little pain,  Mr S suspects he may have got off lightly given Boris Johnson's history of violence. 2. Last year during a charity football match, Johnson took down a nine-year-old as he went in for the ball with an over-enthusiastic tackle. https://vine.co/v/Oq6JqQqqdgr 3.

George Osborne is having a good summer. He got in first with wooing the new intake of Tory MPs, to the extent that many of them seem slightly besotted with the warm and friendly Chancellor who welcomes them cheerily to drinks events. He humiliated Boris Johnson with jokes about his ‘dilapidated’ campaign bunker - and was at the very least rather pleased that Theresa May ended up humiliating the Mayor by refusing to approve the use of water cannon in London. Now he’s top of the ConHome Tory leader survey for the first time. The Chancellor has risen nine points and got the support of 30.9 per cent of the 700 Tory members surveyed, ahead of Sajid Javid on 18.7 per cent and Johnson on 16.6 per cent.

Water cannons at the ready: the Tory leadership contest is officially underway. How does Mr S know this? Well, in a clear sign that George Osborne means business, he has changed his Twitter profile picture. Osborne is now in Conservative blue, offering a confident grin as he embarks on his campaign to move into Number 10. The new photo also displays a slimline Osborne in contrast to the old photo, which depicted a more laid back Chancellor. While Mr S will of course keep readers updated as Boris Johnson and Theresa May develop their online presences, Steerpike can't help wonder why Osborne didn't opt for this week's cover image of Octo-Osborne...

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/theosbornesupremacy/media.mp3" title="Isabel Hardman and George Parker discus how George Osborne rules Westminster" startat=38] Listen [/audioplayer]Against the heavy artillery fire of the Labour leadership battle, the struggle of the Conservative leadership contest goes almost undetected outside Westminster. It is no less intense, even though the Conservatives will not elect a new leader for at least three years. After a week of the parliamentary recess, there is no question about who is winning. This week, for the first time, George Osborne overtook Boris Johnson as William Hill’s favourite. Not so long ago, Osborne was a mere limpet on David Cameron’s wetsuit, clinging on thanks to the patronage of his boss.