Summary
Here is a roundup of all the day’s top news stories from Westminster:
- Tory leadership contender Rishi Sunak has again insisted that inflation must be brought under control before the government can consider cutting taxes. Speaking during a visit to Teesside, where he secured the backing of the region’s mayor, Ben Houchen, he dismissed accusations that he had been a “socialist chancellor”.
- Conservative leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt has been forced to defend her time in government as her rivals step up attacks on her ministerial record. The bookmakers’ favourite to win the race to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister has accused other campaigns of running “black-ops” briefings against her to damage her chances of reaching the last two of the contest.
- Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse has warned that transport services face “significant disruption” owing to the heatwave as he urged people to avoid travelling on Monday and Tuesday. He said steps have been taken to ensure hospitals and ambulances that may come under pressure were prepared.
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Tom Tugendhat, the one Tory candidate without ministerial experience, said on Saturday he was committed to delivering on Brexit, despite having been a strong Remain supporter in the 2016 referendum. He said there were still important issues relating to the working of the Northern Ireland Protocol which needed to be resolved with the EU.
- Boris Johnson is threatening to set an “early test” for his successor by ensuring they have to face two early byelections as the new Tory leader, the Observer has been told. The prime minister is planning to elevate at least two current MPs to the House of Lords well before the next election, triggering two contests that will test public support for whoever replaces him in Downing Street.
- Sir Tony Blair has issued a rallying call to western nations to come together to develop a coherent strategy to counter the rise of China as “the world’s second superpower”. Delivering the annual Ditchley lecture the former prime minister called for a policy towards Beijing of “strength plus engagement” as he warned the era of western political and economic dominance was coming to an end.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the politics live blog for today. Thanks for following along. You can keep across all the latest news from the Tory leadership race and Westminster here.
Goodbye for now.
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Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse has warned that transport services face “significant disruption” owing to the heatwave as he urged people to avoid travelling on Monday and Tuesday.
After chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra committee, Malthouse told the BBC:
Obviously the transport providers are messaging people that they should only travel if they really need to on Monday and Tuesday.
Services are going to be significantly affected. The heat will affect rails, for example, so the trains have to run slower. There may be fewer services. People need to be on their guard for disruption.
If they don’t have to travel, this may be a moment to work from home.
Malthouse said steps have been taken to ensure hospitals and ambulances that may come under pressure were prepared, while schools were being issued with guidance to enable them to remain open, PA reported.
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Boris Johnson is threatening to set an “early test” for his successor by ensuring they have to face two early byelections as the new Tory leader, the Observer has been told.
The prime minister is planning to elevate at least two current MPs to the House of Lords well before the next election, triggering two contests that will test public support for whoever replaces him in Downing Street.
It is understood that he wants to hand peerages to Nigel Adams, a Cabinet Office minister and one of his closest allies, and culture secretary Nadine Dorries, who has emerged as one of his most loyal cabinet colleagues. Both have large majorities, but the combination of a recent Tory poll slump and its disastrous recent byelection record could make the contests a close call.
There are currently two lists of peerages planned – one is a regular list, while the second is Johnson’s resignation honours list. “You can’t announce a peerage and say they won’t kick in for two years [after the next general election],” said a source familiar with Johnson’s plans. “Elevating MPs will mean those seats will be freed up to be contested. It will be a very early test for the new leader.”
Adams, who championed Johnson long before he became Tory leader, has already announced he is stepping down at the next election. As minister without portfolio in the Cabinet Office, he was at the heart of attempts to rescue Johnson’s premiership as it was falling apart earlier this month.
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Economics made simple: 10 experts on where the cost of living crisis came from, and where it’s heading.
Read the Observer piece on what the economic crisis means for Britain and how we should respond below.
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Tom Tugendhat, the one Tory candidate without ministerial experience, said on Saturday that he was committed to delivering on Brexit, despite having been a strong Remain supporter in the 2016 referendum.
He said there were still important issues relating to the working of the Northern Ireland Protocol which needed to be resolved with the EU.
He told GB News:
One of the other things I’ll be making sure is delivered is Brexit. What Boris Johnson has done is delivered most of Brexit, let’s be honest there’s still Northern Ireland, and that’s a really big issue. Let’s not kid ourselves that it’s going to be easy because it’s not.
Despite having seen his tally of votes fall in the second ballot of MPs, in which he finished fifth, the former Army officer said he had no intention of dropping out, PA reported.
He said:
I have never turned down a challenge because the odds were against me. I don’t plan to start now.
Sir Tony Blair has issued a rallying call to western nations to come together to develop a coherent strategy to counter the rise of China as “the world’s second superpower”.
Delivering the annual Ditchley lecture the former prime minister called for a policy towards Beijing of “strength plus engagement” as he warned the era of western political and economic dominance was coming to an end, PA reported.
He said:
How did Britain ever reach a point where Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn came for a short but consequential time to shape our politics? Or America to a place where whether you got vaccinated denoted political allegiance?
The craziness in our own politics has to stop. We can’t afford the luxury of indulging fantasy. We need to put reason and strategy back in the saddle. And we need to do so with urgency.
On China, Blair said it had already caught up with the United States in many fields of technology, while its president, Xi Jinping, had made no secret of his ambition to return Taiwan to Beijing’s rule.
At the same time, Vladimir Putin’s “brutal and unjustified” invasion of Ukraine showed they could no longer automatically expect major world powers to abide by accepted international norms.
He added:
As a result of the actions of Putin, we cannot rely on the Chinese leadership to behave in the way we would consider rational,” he said.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying in the near term, that China would attempt to take Taiwan by force. But we can’t base our policy on the certainty that it wouldn’t.
And even leaving to the side Taiwan, the reality is China under Xi’s leadership is competing for influence and doing so aggressively.
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The Tory mayor of Tees Valley, Ben Houchen, said he was backing Rishi Sunak to be the next party leader because he was committed to levelling up.
Houchen, speaking on a joint visit to the Teesside Freeport, said the former chancellor had brought the Treasury to Darlington and backed the area with cash for investment in transport and the freeport.
He said:
The really important thing is that in this leadership contest we need to make sure that whoever wins is committed to the levelling-up agenda.
Boris Johnson did a fantastic job with starting it off and we can’t afford for that to be left behind, and with Rishi having directly engaged with me on this, and having committed fully to the levelling-up pledge that I put out to the leadership contenders, given what he’s done locally as well, it feels to me like he’s the right man for the job.
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Sunak insists inflation must be controlled before tax rises during Teesside trip
Tory leadership contender Rishi Sunak has again insisted that inflation must be brought under control before the government can consider cutting taxes.
In the first TV leadership debate on Friday, the former chancellor attacked calls by his rivals for immediate tax cuts paid for by increased borrowing as a “fairytale”.
Speaking during a visit to Teesside, where he secured the backing of the region’s mayor, Ben Houchen, he dismissed accusations that he had been a “socialist chancellor”, PA reported.
He said:
I think the number one economic priority we face as a country is inflation. I want to get a grip of inflation because inflation is what makes everybody poorer.
If we don’t get a grip of it now it will last longer and that is not a good thing. Once we’ve done that, I will deliver tax cuts.
Sunak also said he believed he would be the best leader to take on Labour at the next general election.
He said:
I am going to continue making the positive case for my candidacy and I believe I am the best possible person to help our party defeat Keir Starmer and defeat the Labour party in a general election.
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Conservative leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt has been forced to defend her time in government as her rivals step up attacks on her ministerial record.
The bookmakers’ favourite to win the race to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister has accused other campaigns of running “black ops” briefings against her to damage her chances of reaching the last two of the contest.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the trade minister insisted her achievements in government prove she can “get stuff done” and demonstrate she is ready for the top job.
Labour has criticised Boris Johnson after reports said he had failed to attend recent Cobra meetings.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said:
Boris Johnson has gone missing in action again. He’s back to his old tricks of skipping important Cobra meetings. Where’s the plan for the delivery of essential services and how people will be kept safe at work, on transport, in schools, hospitals and care homes?
The public will have no confidence in this zombie Conservative government responding swiftly and decisively to this national emergency as this disgraced prime minister prepares to party while Britain boils. If he still can’t take the responsibility of the job, he should leave right now.
Daytime temperatures on Saturday are predicted to be around 27C in London, 26C in Cardiff, 23C in Belfast and 21C in Edinburgh, PA reported. On Sunday, it could reach 30C in the capital, 27C in Cardiff, 24C in Belfast and 23C in Edinburgh.
Temperatures are forecast to increase by several more degrees on Tuesday - up to the mid-30s for much of England and Wales.
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Here are some images from last night’s Channel 4 debate.
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The Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse will chair a meeting of the government’s Cobra civil contingencies committee to discuss the impending heatwave, a government spokesman has confirmed.
It will be the second Cobra meeting Malthouse has led on the issue, with temperatures expected to reach as high as 40C in some parts of the UK early next week.
- Good morning, I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be with you throughout the rest of the day to bring you the latest updates from Westminster and beyond. Follow me on Twitter @tomambrose89.
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Penny Mordaunt – the current bookmakers’ favourite – struggled to either impress or land any significant blows on her opponents in last night’s debate.
However, in an interview with the Telegraph, she has been keen to defend her record.
She told the paper:
Look at what I’ve done. The first job that I had in government, I managed to bring the firefighters’ dispute, pensions dispute and strikes to an end. Other ministers didn’t.
I managed to get real international leadership for this country and make a tangible difference to people’s lives on the issue of disability, as well as changing perceptions of our government, in that respect.
In the 85 days I was at the MoD, I brought in some things which have had a radical change in terms of our command structure and the fact that men and women of our armed forces are never, ever going to be paid less than the living wage again.
I do get stuff done. Paymaster general, I rewrote our nation’s resilience strategy, brought the first ever One HMG defensive cyber strategy together, gripped issues that have been kicking around Whitehall for yonks, such as getting a compensation scheme for those poor souls affected by the infected blood scandal. You know, I could go on.
- That’s it from me for now, my colleague Tom Ambrose is taking over.
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Meanwhile, away from leadership debate, the former education recovery commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, has accused the government of burying its head in the sand over the loss of learning among children in England due to Covid, warning the problem will not just “go away”.
He expressed regret about lost opportunities after the government rejected his ambitious £15bn plan for recovery, including an extended school day for all, and warned that the flagship national tutoring programme (NTP) was in danger of becoming little more than “a few kids in the corner doing a bit of tutoring”.
Speaking a year after Covid restrictions were finally lifted on what the government called “freedom day”, Collins voiced concern about a tax-cutting arms race in the Conservative leadership contest, which he warned would result in cuts to education spending.
Collins resigned from his job as education catch-up tsar in June last year in protest at the prime minister’s decision to scale back recovery plans, warning the new offer did not come close to meeting the needs of children whose education was thrown into chaos by the pandemic. The government has so far pledged around £5bn in catch-up funding for schools and colleges.
In an interview with the Guardian, Collins said he remained convinced the country was underinvesting in education overall, and warned that the evidence emerging in recent months about the impact of lost learning suggested that the NTP, set up with great fanfare to help left-behind children catch up, was not delivering.
Some polling from Opinium on last night’s debate:
🚨BREAKING - SNAP DEBATE POLL🚨
— Opinium (@OpiniumResearch) July 15, 2022
Tonight we asked over 1000 normal voters to watch the debate and we have just asked them who they thought performed best.
Results:
Tugendhat 36%
Sunak 25%
Mordaunt 12%
Badenoch 12%
Truss 6% pic.twitter.com/0q4IliqQNM
Which candidate most came across as...
— Opinium (@OpiniumResearch) July 15, 2022
(First place / Second place)
A strong leader: Tugendhat/Sunak
Competent: Sunak/Tugendhat
Shares my views: Tugendhat/Badenoch
Could win an election: Sunak/Tugendhat
Charismatic: Tugendhat/Sunak
Trustworthy: Tugendhat/Badenoch pic.twitter.com/lcNI8u5S8y
Key takeaways from the leadership debate
The five candidates still standing for the leadership of the Conservative party were in action in a TV debate broadcast on Channel 4 on Friday night. Here are the five key takeaways:
Tom Tugendhat was the only one able to answer freely
Given the opportunity to answer “yes” or “no” to the question “is Boris Johnson honest?”, Tom Tugendhat was the only person able to do it. He got warm applause for simply saying: “No.”
Kemi Badenoch came closest, saying “Sometimes”. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss all refused to be drawn into the one word answer, and prevaricated.
Τugendhat essentially played the role of the minority party candidate in a multiparty debate, free to just speak his mind, call out the hypocrisy in everybody else, all the while safe in the knowledge there’s virtually zero chance he will end up elected.
Truss has a delivery mantra problem
Truss tried to focus again and again about delivery in every department, saying that her trade deals with Australia and Japan had been considered impossible, and that she had stood up to Vladimir Putin. But it all felt heavily scripted from her.
Badenoch and Tugendhat felt more off the cuff, and Sunak was a more fluid performer here than he has been on the radio over the last 48 hours. Truss felt rigid and dogmatic.
Sunak’s Treasury experience is a potential asset – but not with party members
In a crucial exchange that was mostly Sunak v Truss, the foreign secretary told the former chancellor that Covid was a once-in-a-century occurrence, and that the government should look accordingly at paying it back over a longer term. Sunak was clear, saying: “The best way for people to have money in their pocket is to get a grip of inflation.”
Again and again during the debate he demonstrated a better command of the numbers and Treasury brief, but you still ended up with the feeling that a man instinctively fiscally conservative is being pushed into a corner and portrayed as a leftist for not wanting to cut taxes
You can read more here:
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What happened in the debate?
In an often difficult night for all the candidates – former chancellor Rishi Sunak; foreign secretary Liz Truss; Penny Mordaunt, the trade minister and bookmakers’ favourite; the former levelling up minister Kemi Badenoch; and the backbencher Tom Tugendhat – not a single member of the audience of floating voters raised their hands when asked if they trusted politicians.
In a long section on trust, the candidates were asked whether Johnson was honest. “Sometimes,” said Badenoch, while Mordaunt talked about “really severe issues”, and Truss spoke of “mistakes”. Tugendhat won applause by saying, simply: “No.”
In a separate show of hands after a debate on energy bills just three people said they felt politicians were doing enough to help people. When asked at the end of the debate if it had made them more likely to vote Conservative, only 10 of the audience raised their hands.
Mordaunt and Badenoch clashed with visible enmity about the former’s views on trans rights. When Truss declined to back up her version of events about policies in the government’s equalities office, Badenoch said: “Come on Liz, tell the truth.”
Mordaunt, meanwhile, asked about negative briefings about her from some of the other camps, refused to say she trusted the other candidates.
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Tory candidates 'scratching each other's eyes out' - Starmer
Good morning.
Last night, the five remaining candidates to become the next Conservative leader, and therefore prime minister, went head-to-head in a live TV debate.
The debate saw open arguments over tax and identity politics – and none of the five candidates was willing to say that Boris Johnson is honest.
Coming hours after Liz Truss sought to reinvigorate her faltering campaign with a sudden announcement of new tax cuts costing more than £20bn a year, Rishi Sunak the ex-chancellor, openly ridiculed his former colleague’s plans during the Channel 4 broadcast.
You can read my colleague Peter Walker’s full report of the debate here.
Meanwhile, the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has dismissed the acrimonious Conservative leadership race as a “travelling circus”, in which the candidates have demolished their party’s economic credibility by promising billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts.
He tells the Guardian’s political editor the party “has got no sense any more of what it stands for”.
“That’s why you have all these candidates scratching each other’s eyes out, taking lumps out of each other,” he said.
We’ll bring you all the latest UK political developments throughout the day, as they happen.
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