Steerpike

To Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the great and the good of the Republican elite have arrived to crown Donald Trump as their presidential candidate once again. After the 2020 convention was hit by Covid, this year's political jamboree is a full-blown Trump-fest. Hot topics of conversation include his pick of JD Vance for his VP nominee and the platform on which the party will be standing later this year. Wearing their best concoctions of red, white and blue, thousands of Republican delegates have been striding around the Fiserv Forum to hear speeches, purchase merchandise and catch up with comrades, ahead of November's presidential rematch between 'the Donald' and the man he calls 'Sleepy' Joe Biden.

Another day, another drama. This time it's in Wales, where Labour leader Vaughan Gething has this morning resigned from his role as First Minister. In a statement the outgoing FM admits he had hope that over the summer period 'rebuilding and renewal could take place under my leadership... I realise now that this is not possible.' Gething's resignation comes after a turbulent morning under fire after four ministers resigned this morning in a mass mutiny. In the space of a few minutes, the Welsh First Minister today lost his economy secretary, culture secretary, housing secretary and counsel general. Talk about an exodus...

As Rishi Sunak prepares to step down, the race for a new Tory leader is underway. Although no one has officially announced they'll run, there are already a number of names in the mix. Kemi Badenoch is a top contender, according to Conservative Home, which suggested that over a quarter of party members back the former business secretary – double the support of her closest competitors Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat, each on 13 per cent. And now Badenoch has received a public endorsement from her one-time parliamentary private secretary Alexander Stafford. The ex-MP for Rother Valley, who supported Boris Johnson throughout the Partygate scandal and campaigned for Liz Truss in 2022, has taken to the fine pages of the Telegraph to back his former boss.

Back to Scotland, the land of failing upwards. Very recently, Humza Yousaf held the top political job in the country for just over a year – despite the SNP's former cabinet minister having a record of underdelivering while he held the posts of transport, justice and health secretary. Now the First Minister is John Swinney, a failed nationalist leader who was previously forced to step down after his party performed poorly in elections. Not much has changed there, eh? Yet it transpires that these are just two examples of many who have received thousands of pounds in resettlement grants over their political careers despite not achieving, um, all that much.

Sir Keir's Labour government may have only been in power for a week, but already it is experiencing party splits. The Sunday Telegraph reported this weekend that allies of Starmer’s deputy Angela Rayner fear she is being ‘frozen out’ of the top team — and now new Health Secretary Wes Streeting is facing dissent over his puberty blocker plans. Streeting announced last week that, following the findings of the Cass review into gender services, there would be a permanent ban placed on puberty-halting drugs used on children with gender dysphoria. The use of these meds had already been temporarily paused by the NHS after the publication of Dr Hilary’s rather damning report this year, which put forward a number of recommendations for UK gender clinics.

Uh oh. It's day five of Sir Keir's new Labour government and already the reds are running into trouble. Politicians confirmed last week Sunak's Rwanda plan was to be scrapped, with the Labour party instead planning to tackle immigration by 'smashing the gangs'. But there is a cost to the change of tack – and a rather steep one at that. It turns out that the Rwandan government is a little reluctant to repay the money it received from the UK for the scheme, saying it is 'under no obligation' to return the £270 million sum. Dr Doris Uwicyeza Picard from the country's ministry of justice told the BBC: We are under no obligation to provide any refund. We will remain in constant discussions.

The election is over and with MPs now being sworn in, where better to take the temperature of Westminster then at The Spectator's annual summer party? As New York Magazine recently wrote, it is ‘an unmissable event on the social and political calendar’ and perhaps the only place in the world that you would find Jordan Peterson laughing at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s jokes. The party, always in early July, is typically a scene of political drama: prime ministerial resignations, leadership plots etc. ‘But while the Tories inside are licking their wounds,’ said Sky News's Sam Coates, reporting outside the door, ‘it's been a parade of Labour cabinet members coming in and out of the building behind me that has been the most striking.’ The Times made the same observation.

The Tories faced a difficult election campaign and things aren't much improving for the party. Now it transpires that Kemi Badenoch used the group's first shadow cabinet meeting to hit out at ex-PM Rishi Sunak, describing his decision to call an early election as bordering on 'unconstitutional'. Talk about trouble in paradise... The shadow housing secretary slammed Sunak for telling an inner circle of the snap election before he informed his cabinet of the plans, blasting his former aide Craig Williams as a 'buffoon'. And Badenoch didn't stop there. Going on, the shadow cabinet minister spoke of the former prime minister's 'disastrous' decision to leave D-day commemorations early, blaming Sunak's choices for the unsuccessful elections of former MPs like Penny Mordaunt.