Isabel Hardman

Last week’s announcement that Oliver Letwin would be charged with putting together different models of Brexit for whoever takes over as Prime Minister to adopt didn’t necessarily reassure that many Tory MPs. Today the head of that Brexit unit came under sustained fire from MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee who seemed staggered not just that the government had done no contingency planning for Britain voting to leave the EU but also that the new unit didn’t yet seem to know what it was doing. So many of the Committee’s questions received the same answers, all along the lines of 'I can’t tell you that’ or ‘it’s not in my gift’ to do this.

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.

The demonstration in support of Jeremy Corbyn is starting to dissipate, but Labour MPs have this evening been contacted by their whips to advise them on their personal safety as they leave Parliament after the late votes. They have been advised on what entrances are being kept open for their safety, and told that anyone who is worried should contact the Serjeant at Arms. Labourites are particularly annoyed that their party's whips have had to send this message to them given they confronted Jeremy Corbyn at the parliamentary Labour party meeting this evening over the behaviour of the grassroots group Momentum. Ian Murray received a big cheer for telling him to 'call off the dogs', and Jess Phillips also accused Momentum of stirring up anti-Zionist sentiment.