Isabel Hardman

Graham Brady has announced the results of the first round of the Tory leadership contest as follows: Stephen Crabb 34, Liam Fox 16, Michael Gove 48, Andrea Leadsom 66, Theresa May 165. So as expected, Theresa May is out on top by a considerable margin, but what is striking is how close Michael Gove has come to Andrea Leadsom, given the rather visceral reaction in the Tory party to the way he treated Boris Johnson last week. Perhaps some of Leadsom's support drifted away after last night's hustings which even her supporters acknowledge did not go particularly well. There may now be pressure on Stephen Crabb to drop out after a not-particularly-good showing, which would speed up the contest, something even those resisting a coronation would be quite happy with.

Tom Watson this evening told the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party that he is taking a ‘last throw of the dice’ before there is a move against Jeremy Corbyn. The party’s deputy leader held a 20-minute meeting with Corbyn this morning in which he warned him that he had to have the authority of the parliamentary Labour party, and that it wasn’t good enough just to have the support of the members. In response, Corbyn told Watson that he wanted to continue as Labour leader, but Watson’s spokesman said it was clear that there wasn’t a solution that involved Corbyn staying on as leader. Neil Kinnock also gave a rousing, booming speech to the meeting which received plenty of cheers from MPs.

Every candidate comes into a leadership contest needing to answer questions about their flaws and experience. But the questions that Michael Gove is having to answer about his own bid are of altogether a different order. The Justice Secretary spent the first chunk of his interview with Andrew Marr this morning having to explain not just why he decided to chuck Boris Johnson, but also why he did it in such a brutal way. "You are our Frank Underwood" Andrew to @Gove2016 @HouseofCards #marr https://t.co/9Qv9NUIIi5— The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) July 3, 2016 Marr repeatedly pressed him, not so much for his reasons for turning on the Mayor, but for an explanation of why he was so brutal.

Labour has gone oddly quiet today, and that’s not just because the party is enjoying the mayhem in the Conservative leadership contest. After a very well-organised week of resignations, the rebels have now decided to sit back and wait for Jeremy Corbyn to come to terms with what the party he leads now looks like. The leader today appointed Angela Rayner as Shadow Education Secretary, which was a matter of necessity as it is Education Questions in the Commons on Monday, and the party didn’t have anyone to face Nicky Morgan. But the Labour frontbench generally looks like a Swiss cheese after the mice have been at it. There are gaps in every team.

Michael Gove's newly-formed campaign team have been ringing around shocked Tory MPs in the past couple of hours to explain why the Justice Secretary pulled out of running Boris Johnson's Tory leadership campaign to launch his own bid, I understand. Dominic Raab, who had also been signed up to the Boris campaign, has been telling colleagues that Boris had proved to be flaky, and that he had not been offering key jobs to figures such as Andrea Leadsom when he had been supposed to - hence Leadsom's own declaration this morning. They were also disappointed with the quality of people around Boris - a comment that has infuriated other Tory MPs who had been supporting the former Mayor.

Stephen Crabb is the first Tory leadership contender to formally declare his candidacy for the job, with a rousing speech about his working class Conservative values this morning. The Work and Pensions Secretary pitched himself as the candidate who not only understands the people who ‘are really struggling, who look at us all in Westminster and […] see nothing to believe’, but who also understands how to hold the Union together - both of which are rather big claims. He used his now-famous (in Westminster, anyway) backstory as someone born in Scotland and brought up in Wales in a working class household to argue that he was uniquely placed to understand these challenges.

Westminster is at its fastest-moving and most unstable for years. Portcullis House and the tea rooms are buzzing with MPs discussing the demise of their leader and who they’ll back in the contest to replace him: and that goes for both main parties, though of course the golden rule of politics still applies, which is that no matter how colossal the Tory mess is, Labour’s will always be gargantuan in comparison. Today the Conservatives decided to move back the date by which their leader must be confirmed to 9 September, which will come as a relief to those Tories who were grumbling about being hauled back from the Mediterranean a week early. The consensus in the party is that the two frontrunners in the leadership contest are Boris Johnson and Theresa May.