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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

UK politics: Badenoch confirms she did criticise Sunak over election at shadow cabinet – as it happened

Kemi Badenoch Reform UK ​​Rishi Sunak Reform Tory United Kingdom James Cleverly Sir Keir Starmer Suella Braverman NATO
Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch pictured in the Commons last year
Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch pictured in the Commons last year Photograph: Jessica Taylor/UK PARLIAMENT/AFP/Getty Images

Afternoon summary

  • Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, has challenged Badenoch to say whether she really did tell a shadow cabinet meeting she thought Braverman was having a public nervous breakdown. She also criticised Badenoch for being willing to criticise Rishi Sunak’s leadership now when she did not do so before the election. (See 3.47pm and 5.16pm.)

  • Keir Starmer is at the Nato summit in Washingon where he has met President Biden. Later today they are due to have a proper bilateral at the White House.

There is further coverage of the Nato summit on our summit live blog.

Suella Braverman has also criticised Kemi Badenoch for not criticising Rishi Sunak in public ahead of the election. As Charles Hymas reports in the Telegraph, in another response to what Badenoch said about her at shadow cabinet (see 5.16pm), Braverman critcised Badenoch for not speaking about where Sunak was taking the party in the way that Braverman herself did after she was sacked as home secretary. Braverman said:

What Kemi says about me says something about her too. I don’t think she’s going to see what that is any time soon, though …

The people who enabled [Sunak] before, by saying nothing, are on great form now. You’re going to get tired of how beautifully that barn door is closed now.

Here is video of Keir Starmer meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Washington.

After the meeting Starmer told reporters:

I’ve just had a very good meeting with President Zelenskiy, where I made it absolutely clear that as far as the UK is concerned, the change of government makes no difference to the support that we will provide.

We’d been united on this when we were in opposition, and it was really important to me to be able to affirm that face-to face at the meeting.

Rishi Sunak has arrived at a post-election meeting of the 1922 Committee, PA Media reports. The Conservative leader was welcomed with the customary banging upon tables from Tory MPs within the parliamentary committee room. He was accompanied by Richard Fuller, the interim chairman of the Conservative party, as he entered.

Keir Starmer will give Joe Biden an Arsenal football shirt with the name “Biden” and the number 46 on the back – a reference to his status as the 46th US president – on Wednesday.

The new UK prime minister, a proud fan of the North London premier league club, will gift the shirt to the US president when they meet for their first bilateral talks at the White House.

“It’s his team and thought it would make a personal gift,” a senior Downing Street official said.

However, there is unlikely to be a photo of Biden with the shirt in the Oval Office as it will be handed over through the usual diplomatic channels.

Starmer, who is a season ticket holder at Arsenal, spent much of the election campaign visiting lower league and non league football clubs across the country.

The prime minister had previously given Emmanuel Macron, the French president, an Arsenal top, when he was in opposition.

Starmer also gave Biden a framed copy of the original Atlantic charter, that led to the formation of Nato, with then Labour prime minister Clement Attlee’s amendments.

Braverman challenges Badenoch to say whether she really did disparage her at shadow cabinet, as leak claims

According to the leak to the Times, which Kemi Badenoch has implied is accurate (see 3.47pm), Badenoch told the shadow cabinet earlier this week that she thought Suella Braverman seemed to be having a “very public” nervous breakdown.

That was a reference to some provocative interventions from Braverman since the Tories lost the election, including a speech in the US where she described flying the Progress Pride flag as “monstrous” and an interview where she refused to rule out joining Reform UK.

Now Braverman has challenged Badenoch to say if that is what she really thinks.

I’d be interested in knowing whether Kemi thinks I’m having a “very public nervous breakdown”. #honesty #unity #wedontleak

UK support for Ukraine still robust, Starmer tells Zelenskiy, saying 'change of government but no change of approach'

Keir Starmer has met Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the margins of the Nato summit in Washington, PA Media reports. PA says:

They greeted each other with a hug and a handshake. Starmer told Zelenskiy that there has been “a change of government but no change in position” with regards to the UK’s support for Ukraine.

John Healey, the defence secretary, and David Lammy, the foreign secretrary, joined the prime minister with officials around a table.

Starmer said: “As you know from the get go – there’s a change of government but no change of approach.”

He said the Russian attack on a hospital in Kyiv was “just shocking”.

Zelenskiy thanked Sir Keir for his words and for Britain’s support.

“Thank you again that you are with us from the very beginning of the war,” he said.

UPDATE: This is from Alex Wickham from Bloomberg.

Updated

Lili Bayer has more coverage of the Nato summit on a separate live blog.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has welcomed Starmer's commitment to resetting relations with EU, No 10 says

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, told Keir Starmer when they met in Washington that he welcomed Labour’s commitment to a reset in relations with the EU, Downing Street says.

In its readout of the Scholz/Starmer conversation, No 10 said:

The chancellor welcomed the prime minister’s commitment to resetting the UK’s European partnerships, noting how important our friendships with like-minded countries will be in a challenging international environment. They discussed the importance of having the widest possible cooperation across all aspects of the relationship.

The two leaders moved on to discuss the need for enhanced defence cooperation in Europe to act as a deterrent for aggression by hostile actors. They agreed that the Nato summit was an opportunity to strengthen our support for Ukraine. The two leaders agreed a firm commitment to deepen in particular UK-Germany defence ties, working at pace to deliver those objectives.

Scholz and Starmer also agreed to continue their discussions at the European Political Community summit that Starmer is hosting at Blenheim Palace next week, No 10 said.

Updated

Keir Starmer and other leaders attending the Nato summit have been meeting US senators ahead of the formal opening of the meeting. Here he is talking to Chuck Schumer, the Democrat and Senate majority leader, as the posed for a photograph.

The government plans to overhaul the Office for Students, the higher education regulator for England, according to a Whitehall source who said that universities will “no longer be used as a political battleground”.

The Department for Education announced yesterday that the former Conservative MP James Wharton had stepped down as chair of the Office for Students (OfS), where he was appointed after having led Johnson’s campaign for the Conservative party leadership in 2019.

The OfS was established as an independent regulator in 2018 but has been dogged by controversy over its priorities and political leanings, including the government’s attempt to appoint the Conservative journalist Toby Young as a founding board member.

The Whitehall source said:

Labour will now embark on reform of the OfS, to deliver the change we promised to the British people, and to continue to support the aspiration of every person who meets the necessary requirements to go to university.

We are determined that our world-leading universities will no longer be treated as a political battleground, but as a public good, and will once again be supported to deliver for students, the local communities they serve and for our economy.

In due course we will be laying out further plans to bring greater stability to our world class universities after the chaos of the last 14 years under the Conservatives.

Under our plans for reform, the OfS will play an important role in creating a secure future for higher education and the opportunities it creates across the country.

Wharton had been the Conservative MP for Stockton South from 2010 until 2017, when he was defeated in the election called by Theresa May. Johnson later rewarded Wharton with a peerage in 2020, as Lord Wharton of Yarm.

Badenoch confirms she did criticise Sunak's handling of election at shadow cabinet

Kemi Badenoch has released a statement about the Times story saying that she criticised Rishi Sunak over the way he handled the election at a meeting of the shadow cabinet this week. (See 9.30am.) There are three points about what she is saying worth noting.

1) Badenoch does not deny anything said in the report, which amounts to an implicit confirmation that it is accurate. She claims to be disappointed that her remarks leaked. But this is unlikely to impress those in the party who will assume she, or her allies, had a role in the story ending up in the Times.

2) She says the party should pay more attention to the views of activists and members. This is an argument likely to impress the people who will have the final say in a leadership contest – activists and members.

3) She says that Tories should be less deferential to their leaders, and that they should argue more in private. The cliche about Badenoch is that she could start a fight in an empty room. Her pitch now seems to be that, if she is elected leader, she will have a lot more arguments in rooms that are full (the shadow cabinet) – but not in public.

It’s a shame our discussions in Shadow Cabinet were leaked yesterday. If there is no private space to discuss our Party’s challenges, we will never fully address what the electorate told us last week.

The views of those outside these meetings matter too. Not just backbench MPs, but our party activists, members and friends who lost seats after giving everything to the campaign.

In government, we had too much nodding along in the room and arguments outside it. That culture needs to change. We need to be honest with one another in private, and united in the direction we take afterwards.

Parliament has released this photograph of all new members of the Commons.

Former deputy prime minister John Prescott has ceased to be a member of the House of Lords, marking the end of a parliamentary career stretching back more than 50 years, PA Media reports. PA says:

Labour peer Lord Prescott had only spoken once in the chamber since suffering a stroke in 2019, official records show, and he had not voted since February 2023.

The 86-year-old was first elected as a Hull MP in 1970. He remained in the Commons until 2010 when he joined the Lords.

He was among a number of peers who Lord Speaker Lord McFall of Alcluith declared on today “had ceased to be members of the House by virtue of non-attendance in the last session of parliament”.

Under a law passed in 2014, peers who do not attend a single sitting of the Lords during a session lasting six months or more cease to be members. But they are still peers, and retain the right to use their titles.

Six peers have had their membership ended because of non-attendance in the last session. The others are: Lord Black of Crossharbour, the former Telegraph owner; Lord Kalms, the former chairman of Currys; Lord Davies of Oldham, a former Labour deputy chief whip; Lady Corston, a former chair of the parliamentary Labour party; and Lord Willoughby de Broke, a hereditary peer and former Ukip member.

Henry Riley from LBC say age may have been a factor these six all stepping back.

There are two more polls on the Tory leadership contest out today from JL Partners.

The first is a poll of members of the public who were asked, out of five candidates, who would be their preference for next Tory leader. By a mile, the winner was “don’t know”, who scored 61%. In second place was Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, on 10%, followed by Tom Tugendhat, the former security minister, on 9%.

The second is a poll of 500 Tory members, who were asked who they would choose in a a series of binary choices. Under the Conservative leadership election rules, members only get to choose between two candidates chosen by MPs.

The poll suggests these results for these contests.

Braverman (35%) beats Badenoch (32%)

Braverman (37%) beats Tugendhat (31%)

Braverman (39%) beats Cleverly (34%)

Badenoch (34%) beats Jenrick (24%)

Patel (35%) beats Jenrick (29%)

Tugendhat (31%) beats Jenrick (25%)

Badenoch (30%) and Tugendhat (30%) is a tie

It is not clear why a Cleverly question was included in the run-off polling when his name was not on the list of people polled among the public as a whole. And some potential run-off combinations have not been tested.

And this is what James Johnson, a former pollster for Theresa May who co-founded JL Partners, is saying about the findings.

My view:

Plenty of time to run but as an early view this is a good poll for Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat, a bad poll for Rob Jenrick – and an underwhelming poll for Kemi Badenoch, given her reputation as a favourite amongst Tory members.

Especially interesting that Tugendhat draws with Kemi and is 6 points behind Suella — potentially suggests the membership is less trenchant in their views than in 2022

Johnson may be overstating Braverman’s chances. She is losing support amongst MPs, and the Sun is reporting that John Hayes, who for years was her biggest champion on the backbenches, has switched to backing Robert Jenrick instead. On current form, it looks very unlikely that she would make it onto the final ballot.

Updated

No 10 announces appointments to whips office in Commons

Downing Street has announced appointments to the whips office in the Commons.

The chief whip, Alan Campbell, was appointed last week. Here are the new appointments. The three most senior whips under Campbell have titles that refect the fact they are also technically members of the royal household.

Mark Tami, deputy chief whip (Treasurer of HM Household)

Samantha Dixon (Vice-Chamberlain of HM Household)

Chris Elmore (Comptroller of HM Household)

Nic Dakin

Vicky Foxcroft

Jeff Smith

Anna Turley

Taiwo Owatemi

Christian Wakeford

Gen Kitchen

Keir Mather

Gerald Jones

Anna McMorrin

Keir Starmer has also appointed Lord Kennedy of Southwark as chief whip in the Lords, which is the job he was doing in opposition. Lady Wheeler is the deputy chief whip in the Lords.

Keir Starmer has met Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, for a bilateral in Washington, where they are both attending the Nato summit starting later. We have not had a readout yet, but the pictures are available.

Scottish Labour sources have played down the significance of Anas Sarwar’s demands for the two child benefit cap to scrapped by Keir Starmer, following an interview with the Record.

The Scottish Labour leader told the Record, which has been campaigning against the policy, the cap was “not right, wrong” and “needs to be reversed”. The Labour MSP Monica Lennon posted the front page on X.

Sarwar’s remarks appear to be curiously timed given that Labour has just won a landslide in Scotland, winning a larger share of vote in Scotland than at UK level, even though Starmer has refused to promise to scrap the cap. That implies this issue is not critical to Labour’s standing amongst voters.

Party sources said Sarwar’s comments simply reiterated his longstanding position on the policy, and said the new Labour government would scrap it when it was affordable. “There isn’t a Labour politician in the country who doesn’t want to get rid of it; it’s a question of when can we. There isn’t a substantive shift here.”

Nonetheless, Labour will face continued pressure from its opponents and from left wing Labour MPs and MSPs to act.

The Scottish National party, despite its heavy defeat last week, is likely to repeatedly hammer Starmer for refusing to act as it seeks to fight back after the election. That could well surface in next week’s debate and vote on the king’s speech – the first of the Starmer era.

Andrea Jenkyns, the Tory rightwinger who lost her Leeds South West and Morley seat to Labour at the general election (a new seat, it had a notional Tory majority of 7,114, which got turned into an 8,423 majority on a 19% swing) was one of only two Conservative MPs before the general election who said publicly that Rishi Sunak should resign. And so you might think she would support Kemi Badenoch’s decision (see 9.30am) to reportedly attack Sunak’s leadership at a shadow cabinet meeting this week?

You would be wrong. Jenkyns has posted this on X about the Times story.

Weak, she should have stood up & said something months ago about his leadership. Rather than trying to appear strong because there is a leadership election! For those who want Kemi as leader, look how she voted for Mays Brexit Deal, more net zero, and failed to rip up EU law.

In his own post on X, Chris Smyth from the Times says this illustrates why it is wrong to assume that Badenoch has the rightwing vote sewn up.

A reminder that although Badenoch is favourite to be Tory leader, a lot of Eurosceptics actually can’t stand her and think she’s not really a right winger

Do keep up

Scottish MPs get ministerial jobs in business and energy departments as Starmer boosts Scotland's voice in Whitehall

Scottish Labour hopes it can strengthen its claim to voters the party is prioritising Scotland’s interests after Keir Starmer agreed to appoint Scottish MPs as business and energy ministers.

On Saturday Starmer made Douglas Alexander, the Blair-era international development secretary and former Paisley MP who won Lothian East last week, a junior trade minister.

Last night the UK government then appointed Michael Shanks, the former modern studies teacher who held his Rutherglen seat after winning a famous byelection victory over the Scottish National party there last year, as a junior energy minister in Ed Miliband’s department for energy security and net zero.

Labour officials say these posts are intended to bolster Scottish Labour’s influence in Whitehall over two reserved areas which were central to the party’s election messaging – that Labour will focus on revitalising the economy and will also protect Scotland’s energy interests.

Having “powerful Scottish voices close to these areas is very important to us”, one source said.

The energy brief has particular significance which will thrust Shanks quickly into the frontline, as Scottish Labour positions itself for the 2026 Scottish parliament elections. After humiliating the SNP last week, by winning 37 Scottish seats, Labour is now far more confident it can win a Holyrood election.

Labour will sell itself to Scottish voters by headquartering Starmer’s GB Energy in Scotland, but it also faces threats to its reputation from North Sea oil interests fighting Labour’s climate strategy and from the threatened closure of Grangemouth oil refinery, with the loss of 400 jobs.

Starmer revealed on his visit to Edinburgh on Sunday that his ministerial team were working on a Grangemouth rescue plan; Ian Murray, the new Scottish secretary, told the BBC yesterday he was briefed on Grangemouth by Scotland Office civil servants almost immediately after taking office on Saturday morning.

Labour also hope the appointment of Kirsty McNeill, a former policy director for Save the Children and a former adviser to Gordon Brown, as Murray’s deputy in the Scotland Office will build bridges with nationalist voters.

A first time MP who beat the SNP in Midlothian on Thursday, McNeill comes from a strongly nationalist family and was taken to SNP candidate adoption meetings as a child. She is someone “who understands the power of persuasion”, the source said. The party hopes she will be the antithesis to the “muscular brow-beating unionism” of the last Conservative government.

Libby Brooks wrote this about McNeill’s campaign last month.

Uma Kumaran, the newly-elected Labour MP for Stratford and Bow in east London, has revealed that on her first day in the Commons yesterday her husband was taken to hospital with a stroke. She says he is doing well but that it has been the worst 24 hours of their lives.

Move to reduce Lords retirement age to 80 is not about Joe Biden, says Starmer

Keir Starmer has denied that his decision to bring in a retirement age of 80 for the House of Lords means he believes Joe Biden should stand down as US president, Pippa Crerar reports.

Keir Starmer has asked officials to pass him notes with updates on England’s euros semi-final match against the Netherlands during talks with world leaders at the Nato summit.

The prime minister, a devoted football fan, will be at the North Atlantic Council meeting where the 32 leaders, including Dutch leader Dick Schoof, will be discussing defence strategy.

However, he admitted that as they would have their phones taken off them for security reasons, he would have to rely on his team to keep him updated.

He told the reporters on the flight to Washington:

I understand our phones are all taken off us, when we go into the council, so I’ve no doubt we’ll be passed lots of notes with really important information about the summit.

One or two of those notes hopefully will be an update on the score, because I’m not going to be able to get it otherwise.

The prime minister said that his advice to Gareth Southgate, the England manager, on leading the team was simple: “Win!”

He added: “I’ve sent a message to the team, obviously I wish them well, I want them to win, and let’s hope they can do it tomorrow.”

However, Starmer tempted fate when he joked about the team’s chances if the match went to penalties, as it did against Switzerland in the quarter finals.

“I’d remind you, England have not missed a penalty under a Labour government in 2024,” he said.

A huge Arsenal fan, Starmer praised winger Bukayo Saka’s goal in the last match of the tournament, which took the score level and took the game into extra time.

“That was classic Bukayo – cuts in from the right and that shot is absolutely classic – inside of the post – I’ve seen it so many times.”

Ukraine must decide if it uses missiles from Britain to strike targets inside Russia, Starmer says

Ukraine must decide for itself whether it uses Britain’s storm shadow missiles to strike military targets inside Russia, Keir Starmer has said.

The prime minister said the long range missiles should be used for defensive purposes but that Kyiv would make its own decisions on targeting.

The UK announced in April that it was sending more storm shadows to Ukraine as part of its single biggest military aid package to the country since the invasion.

Ahead of the Nato summit in Washington, Starmer said:

We’re obviously providing military aid, that is obviously to be used in accordance with international humanitarian law as you would expect.

It is for defensive purposes but it is for Ukraine to decide how to deploy it for those defensive purposes. I’m not going to get into a discussion here as you’d imagine on targeting, that wouldn’t be appropriate, but that is the position.

Speaking to reporters on the flight, he said that his message to Vladimir Putin was that the Nato summit was an opportunity for allies to “stand together and strengthen their resolve”, in particular after the attack on the children’s hospital in Kyiv.

Asked whether the attack constituted a war crime, he suggested it was not for him to make that judgment, but added: “It is absolutely shocking, appalling attack on a hospital and I think that’s plain for all to see”.

Former education recovery commissioner Kevan Collins joins DfE as adviser

Former education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins, who resigned after Boris Johnson rejected his £15bn Covid catch-up plans, is to advise the new government on driving up school standards and finding solutions to teacher shortages and high absence rates.

The Department for Education confirmed on Tuesday that Collins, a widely respected figure in the sector, has been appointed a non-executive board member at the DfE. As such his role will be to support and challenge the department in its efforts to raise standards in England’s schools.

Collins, who has begun his three-year term with immediate effect, said:

I’m delighted to be returning to the Department for Education. There are real challenges facing our schools and I am looking forward to being part of a renewed drive to ensure that we tackle these with bold and fresh new ideas, to deliver high and rising standards in every corner of the country.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said:

Sir Kevan has been an outstanding force for good in schools, especially his work advocating for our teachers and children during the pandemic and he will play a crucial role in advising the department.

Collins has widespread experience in the sector having worked as a classroom teacher, as a director of children’s services in Tower Hamlets in London and as chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, an independent charity dedicated to improving the outcomes of the poorest pupils in England’s schools.

Liz Truss was probably never going to be queueing up at the job office after losing her seat last week – but new accounts show that the company set up for her post Downing Street ‘office’ was at least able to draw on reserves of more than £104,715 this year.

The Office of Liz Truss, which was incorporated in January last year months after her short-lived time in Downing Street, had assets of £146,117 as of the end of March, according to Companies House filings released today. Some £37,777 was due to creditors within one year.

Three people were employed by the company.

Truss, who was prime minister for 45 days, has been keeping a low profile since losing her South West Norfolk constituency to Labour by 630 votes, having previously held a huge 24,180 majority.

Rishi Sunak’s decision to water down some of the government’s net zero targets (which he announced in a major speech last autumn) seems to have backfired. As Kevin Schofield reports for HuffPost UK, polling from More in Common suggests voters were almost twice as likely to regard that as a mistake as to regard it as a positive achievement.

Here is the chart from the More in Common polling.

Commenting on the figures, Luke Tryl, More in Common’s UK director, told HuffPost UK:

Sunak’s reversals on the country’s climate targets simply weakened the Conservative brand, making the prime minister look inconsistent, unable to deliver on his pledges, and unserious about climate change, something that made voters worry for their children and grandchildren’s future.

Environment secretary Steve Reed to hold urgent talks with water companies

Steve Reed, the new environment secretary, has summoned the bosses of Britain’s water companies for urgent talks tomorrow, amid signs that Labour will take a tougher approach to the industry than the previous Tory government, Julia Kollewe reports on the business live blog. There are more details here.

Grant Shapps, the Tory defence secretary, lost his seat at the election. James Cartlidge, a former defence minister, has become shadow defence secretary and he has written an open letter to the new defence secretary, John Healey, challenging him to explain when the government will raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.

John Swinney should resign because SNP needs 'fresh start' after election defeat, ex-MP Douglas Chapman says

John Swinney must step aside as SNP leader to make way for a “fresh start” under Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn, one of the party’s former MPs has said.

At the election the SNP lost 39 of the 48 seats it won in 2019. Douglas Chapman, who stood down as Dunfermline and West Fife MP at the recent election, told the Herald newspaper:

I believe we really do need that fresh start, that fresh impetus, and we need to look to our members to provide that and to be brutally honest with the leadership of the party about what they think has gone wrong and what they think the solutions might be.

We are all well aware of the shortcomings that we’ve had in recent years and that’s everything from the quality of delivery of services, the Scottish government, and making sure that is reset and focused on, making sure we can get back to a situation where the people of Scotland actually trust us as their government.

Asked if Swinney, who only became party leader and first minister after Humza Yousaf resigned in May, should remain in post, Chapman replied:

I know he has not been in the post very long, but I think it’s time to really clear the decks and use the next 700 days to make sure there is a pro-independence government in Holyrood come 2026.

My own feeling is we need a completely fresh start and that points to a new leadership team with the attitude of putting independence at the forefront.

The two frontrunners would be Kate Forbes and Stephen Flynn. They proved themselves over the campaign that they are articulate communicators. I think it would be a good combination with their presence both at Holyrood and Westminster.

Defence review will be 'Nato-first', minister says

Luke Pollard, the new defence minister, was doing a media round this morning. He said that the defence review being launched by the government should be completed within a year. Keir Starmer has suggested that he won’t set a timetable for increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP until that has been completed.

Pollard also said the review would be “Nato-first”. He told Times Radio:

This will be a Nato-first strategic defence review, a focus on our unshakeable commitment to the North Atlantic, to the Europe area, to make sure that we’re keeping not only the UK safe but keeping our allies safe.

Because if we don’t support Ukraine and if they don’t win, Russia won’t stop there.

If we’re not supporting our allies in the Baltic states there will be continuing threats to the United Kingdom, as well as to the rest of Nato.

Here are two more charts from the survey of Conservative party members by the Party Members Project.

Here are the figures on likely candidates, with none of the above and don’t knows included.

And here are the figures with Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage’s names included. Johnson remains the leader the members want most.

Updated

Almost half Tory members want party to merge with Reform UK, poll suggests, as leadership infighting escalates

Good morning. Keir Starmer is in Washington where he will make his debut as prime minister on the world stage attending the Nato summit. It is a big diplomatic moment, but also a big policy challenge. My colleague Pippa Crerar is with the press pack travelling with him and, as she reports in the Guardian splash, Starmer is saying Nato must spend more on defence, while also not yet putting a timetable on when the new government will reach its goal of getting defence spending up to 2.5% of UK GDP.

Nato will be the story of the day. But we will be covering the summit on a separate live blog, and it is the middle of the night in Washington, and so I will start this morning with the Conservative party, where the post-defeat inquest, and the leadership infighting, is just getting underway in earnest.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary, has written an article for the Times urging the party to avoid civil war. Referring to the need for a “sensible post-mortem on what went wrong”, he goes on:

It cannot descend into bitter infighting and finger pointing. That is exactly how we ended up here.

There is strength in unity, and the Conservative Party has always been at its best when it embraces being a broad church. We lost voters to the left and the right, and we won’t win them all back if we narrow our offer.

Good luck with that, as they say. Yesterday Tories were openly attacking Suella Braverman. And Conservative MPs and members who read the Times will probably be paying far more attention to another article in the paper, by the political editor Steven Swinford, in which he reveals that Kemi Badenoch, now the shadow housing secretary, used the first meeting of the shadow cabinet to launch a fierce attack on Rishi Sunak over his handling of the election. Swinford says:

The shadow housing secretary … said at Tuesday’s meeting that Sunak’s decision to call an early election without informing his cabinet was a mistake and bordered on “unconstitutional”.

She said that instead of telling cabinet ministers first, Sunak had opted to inform a small group of colleagues, including Craig Williams, his parliamentary private secretary, who subsequently admitted placing a bet on the election date. She described Williams as a “buffoon”.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Badenoch also said that Sunak’s decision to return early from D-Day commemorations was “disastrous” and had dominated the election campaign, adding that colleagues such as Penny Mordaunt would still be MPs today if he had stayed longer in France.

She said the Tories should not gloss over the scale of the election defeat, and that many colleagues were clearly still traumatised. She said Suella Braverman, the former home secretary who has made a series of trenchant interventions, appeared to be having a “very public” nervous breakdown.

Earlier this year it was reported that Badenoch, the bookies’ favourite in the contest to be next Tory leader, had told a colleague that Sunak would have to “own’” the election defeat. Swinford, of course, does not reveal who told him about Badenoch’s shadow cabinet intervention, but many in the party will assume that the briefing came from her camp and that the story is the opening of her leadership campaign.

The publication of the story coincides with the release of the first post-election poll of Tory members about who they want as new leader. It has been carried out by YouGov on behalf of the Party Members Project run out of Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University, a long-running academic study focusing on the views of members of political parties. Some 725 members were surveyed, with the results weighted to make them representative of the membership as a while, and they suggest Badenoch is clearly in the lead. In its write-up, the Party Members Project says:

Badenoch emerges as the clear frontrunner by some distance even if her support is not yet overwhelming. Once the 13% who said ‘none of these and the 6% who said ‘don’t know’ are removed from the figures (something done with all the leadership figures quoted below), Badenoch’s support currently stands at 31% – effectively twice that of Suella Braverman and Tom Tugendhat, who are on 16% and 15% respectively.

Perhaps surprisingly, Priti Patel, talked up recently as a possible alternative to Badenoch and Braverman, attracts only 6% support. Robert Jenrick, who has been on the manoeuvres for months now, only scores 7%, while Victoria Atkins (who, like Tugendhat, is seen as representing the self-styled One Nation strain in the Conservative Party) is on just 2%. James Cleverly, seen by some as a potential ‘unity candidate’ is on 10%.

This does not come as a huge surprise. But what is surprising is that the survey also suggests almost half of Tory members favour a merger with Reform UK. The Party Members Project says:

As for a potential merger between the Conservatives and Reform, the membership is split down the middle, with 47% in favour and 48% against, with the remainder unsure. Perhaps predictably Leavers are more than twice as likely to support a merger than Remainers (59 vs 25). Support for the idea also increases as one moves up the age ranges, with support for a merger stronger among the over-50s and opposition stronger among the under-50s. Support for a merger is also stronger among ‘working class’ Tories (the C2DEs) than their ‘middle class’ (ABC1) counterparts, as well as among those who backed Truss over Sunak in 2022 (59 vs 27).

This polling was carried out after the general election campaign during which Reform UK’s manifesto was described as twice as reckless as Liz Truss’s mini-budget and many of its candidates were exposed as racist or extremist.

Here is the agenda for the day.

11.30am: The Commons meets so MPs can resume swearing in.

From 1pm (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to hold bilateral meetings at the Nato summit with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president. The Nato summit starts at 4.30pm, with the plenary starting at 6pm. At 10.30pm UK time (late afternooon in the US) Starmer is due to hold a meeting with President Biden at the White House.

5pm: Rishi Sunak is expected to address Tory MPs at the 1922 Committee.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.

Updated

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