Steerpike

With a Liz Truss victory now looking increasingly likely, Tory MPs are playing the oldest game of all: trying to bag the best possible jobs for themselves. In terms of endorsements, it's been one-way traffic in recent days with Ben Wallace, Tom Tugendhat, Brandon Lewis, Nadhim Zahawi, Penny Mordaunt and Sajid Javid all coming out for Truss in quick succession. While some of these aforementioned names no doubt support the Foreign Secretary's vision for Britain, Mr S can't help but note that such endorsements began just as a Truss victory appeared to become an inevitability... The trouble for Truss is how to juggle all these new-found supporters with other loyalists and their demands for office too.

In the Tory leadership race both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have been keen to talk tough on China. Truss has pledged a 'crack down' on Tiktok and announced a 'New Commonwealth Deal' to unite nations against Beijing. Sunak wants a 'new Nato-style alliance', an end to Confucius Institutes at UK universities and has dubbed the country the 'biggest-long-term threat to the world’s economic and national security.' Such tough talk has given heart to campaigners, who want China's treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region of the country to be officially classed as 'genocide.' To date, the Foreign Office, under Truss, has refused to countenance this, by acknowledging Beijing's actions by there but referencing the existing policy of having genocide determined by a competent court.

Dirty tricks, planted stories and anonymous briefings – they're all part and parcel of a party leadership contest. But now the bigwigs over at Conservative Central Headquarters (CCHQ) have brought in some experts to stop anyone hacking Tory members' ballots: namely experts from the National Cyber Security Centre, which works closely with GCHQ's finest in Cheltenham. An email to party members went out tonight, reminding them that 'it is an offence to vote more than once: any member found to have voted more than once will have their party membership withdrawn.

If a week is a long time in politics, then a fortnight is an eternity. Two weeks ago, Penny Mordaunt was the bookies' favourite to be our next Prime Minister, riding high in the polls and second among MPs. Now, after a bruising campaign, the vanquished candidate has opted to back the woman who defeated her to the runner-up spot behind Rishi Sunak: Liz Truss. It's a somewhat awkward endorsement, given how many of Truss's prominent backers were sent out to attack Mordaunt on the airwaves. No less than three of the Foreign Secretary's onetime Cabinet colleagues – Lord Frost, Simon Clarke and Anne-Marie Trevelyan – took aim at Mordaunt's credentials over the course of the campaign.

Steerpike's favourite cabinet minister is at it again. In her vindictive rage to try to avenge Boris Johnson, Nadine Dorries has turned the full force of her rage against Rishi Sunak. She's accused him of leading a 'ruthless coup' against the Prime Minister, being the 'chatty rat' behind the lockdown leak, of 'not working hard', practicing 'dark arts' and, er, wearing an expensive pair of shoes. Now, the Culture Secretary has even taken to retweeting memes of Sunak mocked up as Brutus, brandishing a knife behind Johnson as Britain's Caesar. The image predictably sparked a backlash, with fellow Tory MP Simon Hoare sharing a post which said that 'no MP should be retweeting a post like this... two MPs in recent times have been murdered by extremists.

The Tory leadership races is a tale of two approaches: Liz Truss appears to be campaigning to win the party membership, but Rishi Sunak is is campaigning to win a general election. And its’ Truss’s approach that appears to be working, given YouGov’s survey of the Tory grassroots which shows her leading by 20 points. And now Mr S has more bad news for team Sunak: it’s not just the Tory membership turning against him but 2019 Tory voters too. For, according to a poll done by The Spectator by Redfield and Wilton, those who backed Boris Johnson at the last election now think Liz Truss is more likely to both stand up to China and grow the economy more than her rival.

Yesterday it was Ben Wallace who backed Liz Truss: tonight it's Tom Tugendhat. All the big-name endorsements are coming out and at the moment there's only one candidate they're supporting. In a piece for the Times, Tugendhat praised Truss's economic policies, writing that her plans to cut taxes were 'founded on true Conservative principles.' The endorsement is notable for two reasons. First, Tugendhat was himself a candidate and has a good standing among the 'One Nation' caucus of moderate Tory MPs and supporters. And secondly, Tugendhat and Truss have history together so it's a sign of just how much momentum is behind the Foreign Secretary that he has (belatedly) chosen to support her.

Soaring prices have again reignited one of the long-running debates in British politics: should the energy companies be re-nationalised? The Trades Union Congress (TUC) certainly seem to think so, having produced a pithy film which purportedly compares the two sectors in the UK and France. It features a rather baffled looking Brit and a smug looking French girl. The former claims 'in Britain, billions in profits go to private energy companies'; the latter that 'in France, the profits go back to EDF, which is publicly owned by the French people so the profits go back to us and keep the bills lower.' They contrast the 54 per cent increase in bills in the UK this spring with the 4 per cent with that in France.