Steerpike

You're the American president on a visit to former coal plant in Massachusetts. You're ostensibly there to deliver remarks about climate change. You're facing criticisms for being out-of-touch, rambling and gaffe-prone. So what do you decide to do? Start suggesting you've got cancer in front of the world's press! An implausible-sounding scenario perhaps but that's exactly what bumbling old Biden did yesterday. In a speech delivered yesterday, America's septuagenarian president mistakenly referred to Glasgow as part of England and appeared to suggest he currently has cancer. Whoops! In a long-winded address on global warming, Biden began to describe the harmful impact of emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home.

Oh dear. It seems that the Mordaunt camp has done it again. Just hours after suggesting that Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss would 'murder' the Tory party if they were elected, another suspect #PM4PM tweet has been doing the rounds. It's about the Trade minister's ability to win a general election, citing a YouGov poll of 18-19 July of Tory party members. Team Mordaunt has released a graphic which shows Penny on 28 points compared to Sunak and Truss on 17 and 15 respectively. Separately, screenshots of a document are also being shared among MPs by Mordaunt's supporters, again referring to the YouGov poll labelled 18-19 July. Unfortunately, that poll was actually conducted between 12-13 July, as YouGov's findings show here.

Oh dear. It seems that not all Tory MPs got the memo about last night's no-confidence vote. Tobias Ellwood, a longtime Johnson critic, skipped out on the vote - despite a three-line whip for all Conservatives to stay and support the government. The opposition parties ended up losing by 349 votes to 238 but Tory whips aren't happy with the Defence Select Committee chairman. Ellwood was on a trip abroad to Moldova on committee business, a decision he made despite being warned of the consequences last Wednesday, according to Tory party sources. One told Henry Zeffman of the Times: 'Other Conservative MPs cancelled foreign trips, left poorly relatives and one MP’s mother died on the morning of the vote and still attended and voted.

It's not just the Tory party that's in a bit of a mess. Fresh off the back of Partygate – and Sue Gray's findings about the disrespect shown towards Downing Street's cleaning staff – Mr S wondered just how our elected (and unelected) masters over in the Houses of Parliament have been treating their underlings. And after a two month long Freedom of Information request battle, Steerpike can bring his readers the findings. It seems that the poor men and women toiling in the toilets and turrets of the Palace of Westminster have a pretty difficult job to do. For the cleaning logs detail a number of disturbing incidents in the past 15 months.

The bookies' favourite to win the Tory leadership race, Penny Mordaunt, has had a difficult few days. She’s facing questions not just about her views on trans rights, but about how honest she is about them. Suella Braverman has come pretty close to saying that, like Boris Johnson, Mordaunt has a habit of rewriting history to a version that suits her better and she does not offer the candour straight-talking needed after the Chris Pincher debacle. ‘Smears’, says Penny. She is the candidate of candour and straight-talking. But Mr S has obtained a recording of a speech Mordaunt gave to LGBT+ Tory activists in June 2018, in which she did seem to suggest that it was her strategy not to be straight about what she was doing.

As the reputation of Westminster sinks ever lower and our elected masters seem able to do even less, candidates for political office seek outside areas by which they can bolster their credentials. Once it might have been the Church: now it's often business. But one evergreen way of commanding instant respect in Tory circles is a connection, however tenuous, with the Armed Forces. Unsurprisingly therefore, those leadership candidates with such a connection have been doing their upmost to mention their service at every available opportunity. Take Tom Tugendhat, the man who's quipped that his 'biggest weakness' is 'talking about the army too much.' He proudly sported the tie of his former regiment, the Special Boat Service, last night in the Channel 4 debate.

As the Tory leadership race unfolds, there's plenty of votes up for grabs. Both Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch are competing for the Tory right but there's one group of voters which neither seems especially interested in. LGBT+ Conservatives, one of the biggest groupings within the Tory party, sent out a survey to each candidate this week, asking for their views on related policy areas. Patrons of the group include Ruth Davidson, Andy Street and David Mundell. Unfortunately, while Penny Mordaunt, Tom Tugendhat and Rishi Sunak all chose to respond, neither Badenoch or Truss – both of whom have served as ministers for equalites – chose not to respond, despite the surveys being sent on Monday. Will that make a difference when it comes to next week's voting?

Few MPs have had such an inglorious and brief career as Imran Ahmad Khan. Elected in December 2019, he was charged in June 2021 with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy in 2008. After having the whip duly removed by the Tories, he was subsequently tried and found guilty in April 2022, for which he was jailed for 18 months. That in turn caused a by-election in his Red Wall Wakefield seat: a by-election which swung so convincingly towards Labour that it prompted the no-confidence vote in Boris Johnson which precipitated the end of his premiership. In a career full of disgrace though Mr S has uncovered what may be Ahmad Khan's lasting legacy.