Steerpike

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.

All is not well in the Conservative party. Tory leadership hopeful Suella Braverman has turned on fellow MP Robert Jenrick in a scathing attack on her rival. The former home secretary previously worked closely with the ex-minister while their party was in government – but was this week keen to draw up dividing lines between the pair at Washington's National Conservatism conference. Braverman blasted her former colleague for coming 'from the Left of the party', slamming Jenrick as a Remainer who 'was a big, kind of centrist, Rishi supporter'. Burn... The ex-home secretary went on: I remember talking to him about leaving the ECHR a year ago, and him looking horrified by that prospect. It's really good that he's moving in a different direction.

Oh dear. After last week’s bruising defeat for the Conservatives, the party has been left looking for a new leader and a way to win back voters. With only 121 seats, the Tory party has lost a number of key figures – and just last night, it was revealed that both party chairman Richard Holden and ex-foreign secretary Lord Cameron were stepping down. The Tory peer was a controversial addition to the cabinet last year when Rishi Sunak gave him the foreign brief – but was the ex-PM as helpful a choice as Sunak might have hoped for during campaign season? It transpires that every candidate Lord Cameron chose to feature in the beginning of a campaign video released on Twitter, um, lost their contest.

As rumours continue to swirl about who will make a bid for the Tory leadership, Suella Braverman has been on manoeuvres in Washington. The former home secretary's speech at the National Conservatism conference in the US constituted a rather scathing attack on her own party, and has ruffled feathers across the political spectrum. In a speech considered to be part of her leadership bid, Braverman refused to pull any punches. Slamming equality and diversity training, the ex-cabinet minister told her crowd that: We Tory ministers, nominally in charge of the system, completely failed. The Progress flag flew over our buildings as if they were occupied territory... I wanted to scrap the unconscious bias training which basically taught people how bad and racist Britain was.