Steerpike

Back to Scotland, where the ongoing leadership contest for the next leader is heating up. Nominations for candidates close today, and any potential contender who hasn't received the backing of 100 members won't be able to progress to the next round. Frontrunner Russell Findlay hosted his official launch on Monday, and this morning his main rival Murdo Fraser is making his formal bid for the leadership. But in a rather interesting development, a number of MSPs who had initially thrown their hat into the ring have this week dropped out – and jumped ship to Fraser. And then there were three...

While contenders in the UK Tory leadership race ramp up their campaigns, north of the border the Scottish Conservative contest is just about to get started. Nominations for candidates to succeed outgoing leader Douglas Ross close on the 22 August at 12pm. Each leadership hopeful will need 100 party members to back them in order to formally stand before voting takes place next month – with the winner to be announced on 27 September. Initially six candidates declared they would run for the top job, however just before nominations closed, ex-athlete Brian Whittle announced he would, er, no longer run – and has now endorsed Murdo Fraser, alongside two other former leadership candidates Jamie Greene and Liam Kerr.

Oh dear. It's not a good time to be an SNP politician, what with the recent electoral wipeout, the party's muddled stance on the Middle East and party insiders already plotting who their next leader will be. And now it transpires that the party has lost yet more members, leaving its card-carrying supporters at a new low of just over 64,000. Crikey... After the bitter leadership contest that tarnished the reputation of the SNP, membership numbers fell from 125,000 in 2019 to around 72,000 – a staggering drop of 43 per cent. Not that the party was particularly keen to admit it, with then-spin doctor Murray Foote resigning after it emerged he had inadvertently misled the media over the exodus.

To the Windy City, where the Democratic National Convention is in full swing. In the early hours of this morning, outgoing President Joe Biden bid an emotional farewell to conference delegates to pave the way for Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign, and former US leader Barack Obama is due to speak today. But besides the big names of the moment, Mr S spotted something rather interesting about just how the DNC has been received in comparison to its Republican counterpart by some of the noisiest voices in UK media... When a selection of British politicians decided to make the transatlantic voyage to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention last month, not everyone was supportive of the international trip.

Just when you think the equality and diversity police can't get any madder, they do. Now it transpires that libraries across Wales have been told to become 'anti-racist' in the devolved Labour government's bid to 'eradicate' systemic racism by 2030 – with librarians urged not to hold meetings in 'racist' buildings by decolonisation training experts. It turns out that Welsh library workers are being educated – as part of a £130,000 'anti-racist library collections' project – in 'critical whiteness studies'. These aim to help staff understand the 'dominant paradigm of whiteness' besides other issues, as part of the Welsh government's 2022 Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan. Crikey...

Good heavens. As the 2024 US presidential campaigns pick up pace, some rather damning revelations have emerged about the impression contender Donald Trump left on Queen Elizabeth II. A new biography serialised in the Mail, A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown, has set out the late monarch's reflections on meeting the US businessman and former president – and it appears that she was not particularly complimentary... The pair first met in the summer of 2018, over English tea at Windsor Castle. But despite the civilised setting, the then-President is said to have rather ruffled feathers.

Boris Johnson is back. The ex-prime minister is preparing to grace the nation with his musings as the launch date of his new memoir Unleashed looms. The former Tory leader's latest work will be unveiled at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on 10 October, with his publishers promising the ex-PM will 'explore the big decisions of his time in power' and 'shatter the mould of the modern prime ministerial memoir'. And the October release date ensures Johnson's tome will hit bookshops almost a month before the conclusion of the Conservative party's leadership race, in timing that might leave some contenders more than a little anxious about how his version of events will sway the membership... BoJo's memoirs have not come cheap.

Sir Keir Starmer hasn't exactly had the easiest start to his premiership – what with the recent riots, the country's financial woes and today's move to activate emergency measures in prisons. And now it appears that the PM's popularity with the public has taken a hit too. New Ipsos polling reveals the Prime Minister's net favourability rating has plummeted from his post-election score of +7 to 0. While Starmer is still the most-liked politician in the poll – and has a higher score than the likes of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak two months into their premierships – it transpires that more than half of Brits believe that things in the UK are going in the wrong direction. Talk about a short honeymoon...

When it rains for the SNP, it pours. It transpires that the Scottish government’s culture secretary, who met with Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK, was sent to the rather controversial meeting by none other than First Minister John Swinney himself. Revelations of the encounter have infuriated pro-Palestine party members, with it being understood that hundreds have quit their membership over the matter amidst growing calls for Angus Robertson to resign.

All is not well in the Scottish Tory party. Now four of the six candidates have released a statement calling for the leadership race to be paused until they receive assurances on the contest's 'transparency and fairness'. The letter, signed by Murdo Fraser, Jamie Greene, Liam Kerr and Brian Whittle, is addressed to the party's management board and comes in light of 'disturbing claims' about outgoing leader Douglas Ross. Oh dear... The Telegraph reported this morning that according to senior sources in the party, Ross wanted to ditch the leadership role over a year ago and coronate the current frontrunner Russell Findlay. Ross – who at the time was both an MP and MSP – previously insisted that he wanted to step down as a Member of Parliament at the 2024 general election.

It's a day that ends in 'y' so the nationalists are fighting amongst themselves again. This time it's over a controversial meeting between the Scottish government's Culture Secretary Angus Robertson and Daniela Grudsky, the deputy ambassador of Israel to the UK. As Mr S revealed this week, certain Nats were rather upset about the encounter, in which discussions about energy, culture and the Middle East took place. Aberdeen Central MSP Kevin Stewart writing that: ‘I hope Angus Robertson also demanded an immediate ceasefire’ while his colleague Elena Whitham tweeted out, um, a sad face emoji. You can always rely on the SNP for serious politics, eh?

As the Tory leadership race heats up, all six candidates are trying to draw dividing lines to stand out to their fellow MPs – and the membership. Now Tom Tugendhat has taken to Twitter to make clear his stance on the all-important issue of, um, TikTok. The China hawk has slammed the Beijing-based social media platform, telling his Twitter followers that 'unlike other candidates, you won't have seen my videos on TikTok'. The app, Tugendhat says, is 'controlled by a foreign country' that 'doesn't share any of our values and in fact silences debate'. Don't hold back... The Conservative leadership contender continued his tirade: TikTok is owned by a company called ByteDance, which is headquartered in China.