Isabel Hardman

It is isn’t a great surprise that Esther McVey, Mark Harper and Andrea Leadsom have been knocked out of the first round of the Tory leadership contest, with 9, 10 and 11 votes respectively. None of them had particularly organised campaigns or a sufficiently distinctive pitch to the Conservative party. McVey, for instance, was still ringing people known to be actively involved in other leadership campaigns last weekend, while Leadsom had deliberated over whether to re-run after her 2016 implosion. Harper has learned that being a former chief whip might give you in-roads into the party but doesn’t necessarily endear you to colleagues. The greater surprise from the lower-ranking contestants is that Rory Stewart has managed to do quite so well.

Sajid Javid’s leadership launch was delayed by over an hour because Parliament was trying to make up its mind on whether to stop a no-deal Brexit. When he eventually arrived, there was a rather jolly atmosphere in the room, encouraged in part by the fact that his campaign team had thought it wise to offer a free bar. He was also introduced by Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, whose typically rambunctious style set the tone for Javid’s own speech. Javid is pitching himself as the 'change candidate', despite having served in Theresa May’s Cabinet right up to her resignation. His reason for offering change?

Promising to protect Theresa May’s legacy isn’t really a feature of this Conservative leadership contest. That’s not just because so many of the candidates disagree about the type of Conservatism that they the outgoing Prime Minister espoused, but because she doesn’t really have much of a legacy to protect. But one of the few reforms that May did introduce is under threat as a result of the upheaval in the party. The Domestic Abuse Bill is currently in draft form, despite there being apparently widespread support for its policies in parliament. Its publication in draft was delayed a number of times ‘because of Brexit’, which is the sort of excuse that any new Prime Minister could make as they delay it for another few years, too.

Boris Johnson is currently the quiet man of the Tory leadership contest, lurking in the shadows rather than courting media attention as he usually does. His campaign team has deliberately held him back from touring the studios to avoid gaffes or rows. They're even nervous about the limited exposure he has, joking that he is 'always one Monday column away from disaster'. Of course, it's easier to do this when your candidate has as high a profile as Johnson: he doesn't really need any more attention than he's already got. It is, though, not the greatest of compliments from those members of his campaign team that they seem to feel Johnson cannot be trusted not to cause a career-damaging row when the stakes are so high.

‘Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards — and good luck!’ Liam Byrne will forever be haunted by the note he left on his desk for his successor in 2010. Both coalition parties made much of what was supposed to be a joke about the difficulties of keeping Whitehall spending in check. David Cameron waved the note around in his victorious 2015 election campaign. Byrne later said he was so embarrassed by his mistake that he considered throwing himself off a cliff. There’s nothing funny about what Theresa May leaves on her desk for the next prime minister. Rather than just one pithy note, there’s a teetering, disorganised in-tray of decisions the Tory leader has been putting off.

With just a few days to go until nominations close in the Tory leadership contest, candidates are busy trying to shore up support in the parliamentary party. There are five - Sam Gyimah, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Mark Harper and Esther McVey - who currently don't have sufficient nominations to make it onto the ballot paper. Harper tried to get some attention by asking a question about the Peterborough by-election at today's Prime Minister's Questions, while Gyimah has been doing the rounds in Portcullis House as MPs have trundled through. Meanwhile I understand that Rory Stewart has cancelled all his media appearances in order to hold as many meetings as possible with MPs. Stewart's predicament is an interesting one.

The Tory leadership contest rules are to change in order to whittle down the number of candidates, the party board confirmed this evening. After it became clear that the contest was going to be rather chaotic with more than a dozen candidates, the party agreed to raise the threshold for nominations to make it harder for contenders to get onto the ballot paper. Each would-be leader must have eight nominations to get onto the ballot, and then win the support of at least 17 MPs in the first round. Then at the second ballot, any candidate receiving 32 votes or fewer will be eliminated, with rounds continuing until only two remain. The first round will take place on 13 June, and further ballots are scheduled for 18 June, 19 June and 20 June.

Why would you stand for the Tory leadership? If you're someone like Dominic Raab, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, you've been planning this for months, with a team in place since at least the start of the year because you really think you can win this. But there are other entrants who are highly unlikely to get anywhere near the final two but are still standing. Some of these MPs may think they genuinely have an outside chance, but others have made a variety of calculations. Rory Stewart, for instance, is building a proper profile for himself as someone unafraid to walk around in public asking people what they think (which is rare for politicians today). This will set him in good stead for another leadership contest.

Change UK has been holding post-mortem meetings about its failure to win any seats in last week’s European elections, I understand. Members of the newly-formed party met up this week to discuss what to do next after it only secured 3 per cent of the vote overall.  Critics have suggested that it’s already all over for Change UK, and even its optimistic members accept that the party is going through a very difficult phase. There is talk in some quarters of a merger with the Liberal Democrats- and it was notable that both Mike Gapes and Anna Soubry praised Jo Swinson, who is standing to lead that party.

Inevitably, the Tory leadership contest is developing a row about process and possible stitch-ups. Party grandees have been suggesting limiting the number of candidates to prevent ‘chaos’ (which suggests an interesting reading of the current political turmoil as not being chaotic). Iain Duncan Smith thinks there should be a higher threshold for nominations and more candidates knocked out at each round, while members of the 1922 Executive committee are also proposing limiting the numbers of candidates to around a dozen. There is a split though on whether this would be fair or whether the ‘widest debate possible’ is more important.

Will Boris Johnson being told to answer to allegations of misconduct in a public office derail his leadership campaign? The former foreign secretary has been told he must appear in court to answer the claims, brought in a private prosecution by campaigner Marcus Ball, who objects to his claim during the referendum that the UK sends £350 million a week to the EU. Today a district judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with a trial. This prosecution will naturally be seen by someone of Johnson's enemies as a chance to undermine him while he's the frontrunner in the Conservative leadership contest. But this isn't likely to have the effect they hope.

Parliament is in recess at the moment, though the difference between a House of Commons Chamber that is sitting and one that isn't is scarcely noticeable at present, given how few votes MPs are being required to attend. There is a similarly thin distinction between a government led by Theresa May as she insists she's not going anywhere, and one led by the Theresa May who, last week, finally conceded that she was going. Not much is happening, as per usual. In fact, there will be even less happening as a result of May's resignation announcement. Today at the Number 10 lobby briefing, the Prime Minister's official spokesman was asked whether the Withdrawal Agreement Bill was really going to return to the Commons next week as planned.