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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Suella Braverman out of Tory leadership race as Rishi Sunak leads with 101 votes - as it happened

Tory Liz Truss ​​Rishi Sunak Penny Mordaunt Gavin Williamson Peter Walker

According to the Times’ Henry Zeffman, Tory MPs believe that Andrea Leadsom will be chancellor if Penny Mordaunt becomes prime minister.

The last time Leadsom came close to being offered the post of chancellor by a campaign was in 2016, when Boris Johnson was meant to offer her the post in return for her endorsement. But a letter containing the pledge was never handed over, Leadsom decided to run herself, and the setback contributed to Michael Gove deciding to withdraw support from Johnson, and Johnson abandoning his campaign.

Updated

Braverman claims Mordaunt's record on gender-neutral language in bill shows she did not stand up for women

Suella Braverman, the attorney general who is now out of the Tory leadership contest, has accused Penny Mordaunt, who is now the favourite, of not standing up for women.

Referring to legislation passed to allow her as attorney general to take maternity leave (the Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Act), Braverman said Mordaunt was to blame for gender-neutral language in the original draft which referred to a pregnant person, not a pregnant woman. She told Sky News:

Penny is a very good politician, I disagree with Penny on some key issues, in relation to one specific matter, ie the maternity bill that was passed for my benefit when I had my baby last year.

I do have to say that Hansard and the record shows that Penny Mordaunt. as the bill minister, the minister responsible for passing that legislation, did oppose and did resist the inclusion of the word woman and the word mother and did only concede after unsustainable pressure from the House of Lords.

I was quite disappointed by the way in which it was handled and the responsible minister, I’m afraid, didn’t stand up for women and didn’t actually reflect the views of a lot of our party on wanting women to be authentically represented on the face of the bill and in legislation.

Mordaunt has said she changed the language in the bill, which was originally drafted by someone else.

Braverman also told Sky News she would consider her options before deciding who to back in the next ballot. But she said a key factor would be who would do the most to stop illegal migration across the Channel.

In a later interview with the PM programme on Radio 4, Braverman said she did not consider Mordaunt an authentic Brexiter – even though Mordaunt backed leave – because Mordaunt voted for Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

And she criticised Mordaunt’s stance on trans rights. She said:

My perception of Penny is she takes a different view to me when it comes to gender ideology and the position of trans. For example, I think she said a trans woman is a woman. I disagree with that.

Suella Braverman
Suella Braverman. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

And here are takes from three more journalists on what the results of the second ballot mean.

From the FT’s Stephen Bush

From the Times’ Steven Swinford

From Talk TV’s Tom Newton Dunn

All five remaining candidates in the contest - Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat - have agreed to take part in the first TV debate, on Channel 4 tomorrow at 7.30pm. This is from Krishnan Guru-Murthy, who will be moderating.

Kemi Badenoch says the results today show a growing number of Tories support her brand of “honest politics and conservative principles”.

My colleague Aubrey Allgretti posted this yesterday giving the timings for the remaining parliamentary ballots in the Tory leadership contest.

According to the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, bookmakers’ odds suggest Penny Mordaunt is now more than twice as likely to be the next Tory leader as Rishi Sunak.

Updated

David Davis, the former Brexit secretary who is backing Penny Mordaunt for next Tory leader, has described the Lord Frost comments about Mordauant (see 9.20am and 11.31am) as part of a “black ops” operation. He told Sky News:

It’s absolutely clockwork - you get to the point that somebody gets ahead and looks to be the real challenger, and then the black op starts, the incoming fire starts.

A supporter of Liz Truss said her campaign had picked up “solid momentum” in what had been a “difficult round” for them, PA Media reports. Simon Clarke, chief secretary to the Treasury, said there was a limited pool of support they could have plausibly won over from the supporters of the candidates eliminated in the first round.

This is very much on the trajectory we thought. We are attracting broad support from people across the party.

Updated

Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary and Liz Truss supporter, has urged MPs to unite behind Truss. Her message seems to be aimed particularly at Suella Braverman’s supporters, who now must choose someone else to vote for, and supporters of Kemi Badenoch, another rightwinger. The point about Truss being someone “who actually has the ability to lead the country” seems to be a reference to Penny Mordaunt’s relative inexperience.

Tom Tugendhat’s team says he is not about to pull out, Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall reports.

Updated

The Liz Truss campaign has issued a statement praising Suella Braverman for the campaign she led. That is a transparent way of appealing for the support of the MPs backing Braverman. A Truss campaign spokesperson said:

Today’s results show that Liz Truss is attracting a wide range of supporters from across the Conservative party.

Suella Braverman ran a campaign that she can rightly be proud of.

As Liz set out in her speech, now is the time for MPs to unite behind the candidate who will cut taxes, deliver the real economic change we need, continue to deliver the benefits of Brexit and ensure Putin loses in Ukraine.

Liz Truss has the experience to deliver from day one, grow our economy and support working families and then beat Labour.

Updated

ITV’s Daniel Hewitt says Penny Mordaunt’s team are now pushing the argument that she is such a frontrunner that not putting her on the ballot would be a snub to party members.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters used a similar argument in 2015. It was effective because some of them used social media to put pressure on MPs to nominate Corbyn, and under the Labour system MPs can nominate a candidate to put them on the members’ ballot without having to back them personally. The Conservative system is different, making it easier for Tory MPs to resist this sort of pressure from the grassroots.

Updated

Second round ballot results - snap analysis

In an exhaustive ballot process like this one, a single result can sometimes dramatically shift the assessment of who is likely to win. That happened yesterday, when Penny Mordaunt achieved a breakthrough. Today’s result is harder to interpret, but here goes.

1) Penny Mordaunt still has the momentum with her, and that counts particularly at this stage of the contest. (That’s because MPs have a strong incentive to jump aboard a winning bandwagon, for obvious career reasons. In a ballot of party members, that factor does not apply.) She has gained the most extra votes.

2) Tom Tugendhat will come under strong pressure to concede. He said earlier today that he would not (see 11.54am), and if he stays in he will get the chance to take part in the weekend TV debates. But the removal of Suella Braverman is going to release 27 Tory-right votes which potentially could be very useful to Liz Truss. If Tugendhat were to pull out now, he would release 32 votes that would probably go to Rishi Sunak or Mordaunt – less rightwing candidates. Now is the time when that would be valuable. That’s because ...

3) Sunak could pass the crucial 120 mark in the next round if Tugendhat were to pull out. Without Tugendhat pulling out, it would be much harder. Once a candidate has got 120 votes, which is just over a third of the electorate, as long as they do not lose support, they are mathematically guaranteed a place in the final two. And if Sunak were able to get to that point before any other candidate he would go into the members’ ballot with some momentum. Potentially there will be three more rounds of voting before the shortlist of two is ready for the members’ ballot.

4) It is hard - but not impossible - to see how Truss and Mordaunt both manage to overtake Sunak to make it on to the final ballot. To reach the 120 threshold, Mordaunt needs 37 more votes and Truss needs 56 more votes. That would be 93 in total. Assuming the next candidates to fall out are Tugendhat and Badenoch, with the Braverman votes already released, that makes 108 votes potentially up for grabs. It is hard to imagine that Sunak won’t be able to get at least 19 of them (particularly the Tugendhat ones) which would get him over the line. If MPs were to decide that Sunak would have no chance in the final ballot, potentially those votes could stampede en masse to Mordaunt or Truss. But MPs are not abandoning Sunak yet, and even though some polling suggests Sunak would lose amongst the members to both Mordaunt and Truss, an effective campaign could turn that round. That is why MPs are cautious about putting too much reliance on that data.

5) So it still looks probable that the two names on the final ballot will be Sunak and Mordaunt.

Updated

Braverman out of contest as Sunak maintains lead - second ballot results

Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, is announcing the results now.

Rishi Sunak - 101 (up 13)

Penny Mordaunt - 83 (up 16)

Liz Truss - 64 (up 14)

Kemi Badenoch - 49 (up 9)

Tom Tugendhat - 32 (down 5)

Suella Braverman - 27 (down 5)

That means Braverman is out.

Updated

And this is from Sky’s Jon Craig.

This is from the Sun’s Noa Hoffman.

This is from my colleague Aubrey Allegretti, who is in the committee room where the results will be announced.

And here is a picture of the room when the result was announced yesterday.

Graham Brady announcing the result of the ballot yesterday.
Graham Brady announcing the result of the ballot yesterday. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Graham Brady due to announce second ballot results at 3pm

The results of the second ballot are now only 10 minutes away.

Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, will announce the results at 3pm.

Updated

Voting in the parliamentary stage of the Tory leadership contest could carry on until Wednesday, the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope reports.

Sky’s Jon Craig has this take from a Tory MP on what to look out for in the election results.

Updated

Tory leadership contest will push UK government 'even further to right', says Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has said the Tory leadership contest will result in the UK government shifting “even further to the right”.

Speaking at the launch of the second in what will be a series of Scottish government papers making the case for independence, she said:

The change of Tory leader seems virtually certain to be accompanied by a shift even further to the right. That means a shift even further away from the mainstream of Scottish opinion and values ...

We may be just a few days into this Tory leadership contest but it is already crystal clear the issues Scotland is focused on - tackling child poverty, supporting NHS recovery, building a fairer economy and making aa just transition to net zero - will be hindered not helped by who ever becomes prime minister in the weeks ahead.

Sturgeon also said that for most of her lifetime Scotland has been under Tory prime ministers, even though the Conservatives had never won a majority, or even a plurality, of seats in Scotland during that period. “That is not democracy,” she said.

The new paper argues that independence would make Scotland more democratic. It also says that the the proportional voting systems used in Scotland for local elections and Holyrood elections are fairer than the first past the post system used to elect MPs to the House of Commons. It says:

The voting system used at Scottish local and parliamentary elections is also fairer than at UK level, with the numbers of MSPs from different parties more representative of how people actually voted.

The current governing party at Westminster has six MPs representing Scotland and has not won an election in Scotland for almost 70 years. For 39 of the 77 years since the Second World War, Scotland has been governed by UK governments that were elected by fewer than half of Scottish constituencies.

Nicola Sturgeon speaking at a press conference at Bute House in Edinburgh to launch a second independence paper
Nicola Sturgeon speaking at a press conference at Bute House in Edinburgh to launch a second independence paper Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Voting has closed in the Tory leadership ballot. The results will be announced at 3pm.

Tom Tugendhat ‘still in this fight’ for Tory leadership

Tom Tugendhat has vowed not to quit the Conservative leadership race, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.

The Penny Mordaunt campaign has decided not to hit back at Lord Frost after he gave an interview this morning saying she was not up to the job of prime minister. (See 9.20am and 11.31am.) A source in the Penny Mordaunt campaign said:

Penny has nothing but respect for Lord Frost. He did a huge amount to assist our negotiations until he resigned from government. Penny will always fight for Brexit and always has.

Penny Mordaunt.
Penny Mordaunt. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Patrick Flynn, an analyst at the betting firm Smarkets, has posted on Twitter his predictions for the results of the second round.

Flynn has a good record at making predictions in these contests and he spoke to my colleague Archie Bland, for today’s First Edition briefing, to explain how he thinks votes get redistributed.

The UK government’s decision to try deporting some asylum seekers to Rwanda seems to have led to more people seeking asylum in Ireland, Micheál Martin, the taoiseach (Irish PM), has said. He told reporters:

We will be analysing this, but something has happened in the last two to three months in terms of the surge within international protection [asylum] applicants, something has clearly happened.

Anecdotally or intuitively, one can see, and maybe sense, that that policy announcement - which I thought was a wrong policy announcement by the UK, a shocking sort of initiative in my view, to be doing some agreement with Rwanda - clearly may have motivated people utilising the common travel area to come into the Republic - yes, I think it is one of a number of factors.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, and David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, are in Berlin for the start of a two-day trip where they will hold talks on how Britain and Germany can work together to stimulate growth, what Britain can learn from the German economic model, and how a Labour government can cooperate with the EU to make Brexit work.

Tomorrow they will hold talks with the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Today they are meeting other SPD ministers, partly to talk about how as a progressive party they won against conservative opponents last year.

Starmer has posted this about his trip on Twitter.

Keir Starmer with David Lammy at the Reichstag Building in Berlin today.
Keir Starmer with David Lammy (right) at the Reichstag Building in Berlin today. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Updated

These are from my colleague Peter Walker, who is outside the committeee room where Tory MPs are voting.

Kemi Badenoch has retweeted this morning of her alongside Suella Braverman. Badenoch, the former equalities ministers, and Braverman, the attorney general, are the two most rightwing candidates still in the contest and Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister who is running Braverman’s campaign, has described them as the future of the party.

Updated

Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, who is backing Liz Truss, speaking to journalists at the end of the Truss campaign launch.
Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, who is backing Liz Truss, speaking to journalists at the end of the Truss campaign launch. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Attorney general Suella Braverman says UK should withdraw from European convention on human rights

Suella Braverman, the attorney general and Tory leadership candidate, has sought to boost her flagging campaign by highlighting her pledge to withdraw Britain from the European convention on human rights, and from the jurisdiction of the European court of human rights. In a campaign video she says:

There’s one big reason to keep me in the race, and that is fixing small boats. Both my experience as a barrister specialising in immigration law, defending the Home Office before I was an MP, and as the attorney general, have led me to the conclusion, that if we are serious about completing the Brexit promises, if we are serious about taking back control of our borders, then there is no alternative but for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights and permanently exclude the jurisdiction of the European court of human rights.

I’m the only candidate who has pledged this unequivocally ... that if I am prime minister, I will do just that.

Of the candidates still in the race, Braverman is the one with least support yesterday, and she may well be out of the contest by 5pm. But she is still in government as its most senior law officer and for her to be saying unequivocally that the UK should abandon the ECHR is quite something. It is hard to see how a government could implement Braverman’s proposal without blowing up the Good Friday agreement and the Brexit trade deal with the EU, which both an ongoing UK commitment to the ECHR.

Updated

Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall has posted a fascinating thread on Twitter saying what Tory-inclined voters in a focus group in Rother Valley had to say about the Tory leadership contest. It starts here.

And here are two of his conclusions.

Tugendhat says he feels 'like prom queen' because rival candidates trying to get his support

At a briefing this morning Tom Tugendhat, the Tory leadership candidates, said that he felt “like a prom queen” because he was being wooed by rival candidates who want his support. He secured 37 votes yesterday, but is not expected to get through to the final shortlist of two.

Explaining why he was still in the race, he said:

I offered to serve, and that’s what I’ll do, and it’s up to others to decide whether or not they they wish to have me. That’s, I’m afraid, how democracy works. But I don’t quit.

This is from the FT’s Sebastian Payne, who was there.

In a video Tugendhat has also confirmed that he wanted to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP. But he did little to quash claims that the Ministry of Defence squanders resources when he revealed that, because he got issued with so many socks when he was as a soldier, he still only wears army socks. (He became an MP in 2015.)

Voting starts in second ballot for Tory leadership

Voting has just started in the second round ballot for the Tory leadership contest. It closes at 1.30pm, and the result is due at 3pm.

This is from Esther McVey, on her way to vote. She backed Jeremy Hunt in the first round, because he offered to make her deputy PM, and she does not say in her video who she is backing now.

James Heappey, the defence minister, Tom Pursglove, the Home Office minister, and Edward Argar, the former health minister, are backing the Liz Truss campaign, the Times’ Steven Swinford reports.

Frost says he has 'grave reservations' about whether Mordaunt up to being PM

In his Talk TV interview this morning (see 9.20am) Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, also claimed that Brexit would not be safe in Penny Mordaunt’s hands. He said:

If you are a prime minister you have got to be able to take responsibility, you have got to be able to run the machine, you have got to be able to take tough decisions, deliver tough messages.

Anybody can be photo’d in a video with I Vow To Thee My Country, but it is what you do in practice. Are you able to be tough, are you able to lead, are you able to take responsibility?

From the basis of what I saw, I’m afraid I would have grave reservations about that.

Asked whether Brexit would be safe in Mordaunt’s hands, Frost replied:

I would worry, on the basis of what I have seen, we wouldn’t necessarily get that from Penny.

Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury and a Liz Truss supported, posted this response on Twitter.

Updated

Liz Truss's launch - snap verdict

On the basis of last night’s first round results, the Liz Truss campaign is floundering. This morning she really needed something quite remarkable to give it a jump start. This launch didn’t deliver.

In presentation terms, she sounded less slick than Rishi Sunak and less personable than Penny Mordaunt. She did not tell us anything about herself that we haven’t heard before, and (like some of the other candidates) she tried to get away with taking as few questions as possible.

But the main problem was the lack of definition. Truss has the support of Boris Johnson loyalists in the party and in the media (especially the Daily Mail), but it feels as if all the candidates in this contest can’t yet work out whether they are supposed to be praising Johnson and his legacy, or rubbishing him. Rishi Sunak resigned from Johnson’s cabinet last week with a letter denouncing him, but on Tuesday was telling us what a splendid fellow he was. Truss has been running as a Johnson loyalist, but in her Q&A today it was repeatedly put to her that this was problematic. “I’m a loyal person,” she replied, half-convincingly. But she sounded less warm about him than Sunak was two days ago. If she is running as continuity Johnson, she should be willing to talk up his campaigning strengths and tie herself firmly to his 2019 red wall-focused electoral mandate.

Truss stressed her experience, particularly as international trade secretary signing post-Brexit trade deals and as foreign secretary opposing Russia. (“I would continue to lead the free world in opposing Putin,” she said, a touch hubristically.)

But, on domestic policy, her platform was threadbare. The bonanza of extravagant tax-cutting pledges that marked the opening stage of campaign seems to be over and - like Penny Mordaunt at her launch yesterday - Truss had little to say on that subject this morning. She proposed tax reforms to help parents, echoing a proposal Mordaunt made yesterday. But the main problem was that, having effectively denounced government economic policy over the past 12 years as a failure - “We cannot have business-as-usual economic management which has delivered low growth for decades” (see 10.07am) - she did not say what she was going to do about it beyond promising “bold supply side reform”, which could mean anything.

Liz Truss speaking at her campaign launch.
Liz Truss speaking at her campaign launch. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA

Updated

Asked about the Rwanda policy, Truss says: “I completely agree with the Rwanda policy.” She says she has worked closely with Priti Patel, the home secretary, on this.

And that’s it. The Q&A is over.

Truss says she wants to see defence spending rise to 3% of GDP by end of decade

Truss says she wants to see defence spending rise to 3% of GDP by the end of the decade.

The free world did not spend enough money on defence, she says.

It is vital that Russia is defeated in Ukraine, she says.

Q: Lord Frost says Penny Mordaunt is not up to the job. You have worked with her. Do you agree with him?

Truss says she will not be making any disparaging comments about her opponents. The contest shows a broad range of talent. And the party did not get there through identity politics.

Truss says she has 'record of delivery'

Q: Some say Penny Mordaunt is now the best candidate for the right. Shouldn’t you back her?

Truss stresses her record, saying she delivered dozens of trade deals and produced the Northern Ireland protocol bill. She says she has “a record of delivery”.

Q: How can you be a credible agent of change when you stuck with Boris Johnson?

Truss says she did speak out about the national insurance increase in cabinet. But she is a loyal person. She accepted collective responsibilty.

'I'm a loyal person,' says Truss, as she defends her decision not to resign from Johnson's cabinet

Truss is now taking questions.

Q: The two candidates ahead of you in the contest either resigned from Boris Johnson’s cabinet [Rishi Sunak] or never served in it in the first place [Penny Mordaunt]. Is Johnson’s tacit support the kiss of death for your campaign?

Truss ignores the question completely, and stresses her desire to unite the party and deliver.

Q: Why didn’t you resign from his cabinet?

Truss replies:

I’m a loyal person. I’m loyal to Boris Johnson. I supported our prime minister’s aspirations.

Updated

Truss suggest she would offer tax breaks to parents, and people taking time off work to care for elderly parents.

And she says she would like to have lower tax zones in parts of the UK.

She says, as international trade secretary, she delivered trade deals when she was told that was impossible.

She is trusted to deliver, she says.

She says they must level with the public; they will not secure economic recovery overnight.

But she can get the country on an upwards trajectory by 2024.

The Conservatives can win the next election by turning things around.

She will lead a strong and united team.

Let me be clear: Labour are beatable, the Liberals are beatable.

She wants to make the UK an “aspiration nation”. And she will “defy the voices of decline”, she says.

Updated

Truss says 'business-as-usual economic management' has failed to deliver high growth for decades

Liz Truss says we are at a critical moment for our country.

Now is the time to be bold. We cannot have business-as-usual economic management which has delivered low growth for decades.

And we need to win the fight for freedom around the world, she says.

I will campaign as a Conservative and I will govern as a Conservative. I can lead, I can govern, and I can get things done. I am ready to be prime minister from day one.

Updated

Liz Truss launches her campaign for Tory leadership

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, introduces Liz Truss. He says she has done more than anyone to deliver on the potential of Brexit.

Sunak claims he is candidate best able to beat Labour at next election

And here is a full summary of what Rishi Sunak said in his Today interview.

  • Sunak, the former chancellor and Tory leadership candidate, said that “of course” he intended to stay in the UK if he did not become prime minister. The presenter, Justin Webb, asked the question because Sunak had a US green card when he became chancellor, which gives someone the right to work in the US and normally implies a long-term intention to settle there. In response, Sunak said:

I was living and working and studying in America at the time but after that I returned to the United Kingdom and decided to try and serve my country as an MP and then in government and now, hopefully, if I’m fortunate enough, as prime minister.

  • He rejected claim his family wealth meant he was not qualified to be PM, because he could not appreciate how people struggle with the cost of living. Asked about this, he replied:

I don’t judge people by their bank accounts, I judge them by their character and I think people can judge me by my actions over the past couple of years. Whenever I have needed to step in to support people I have and furlough is a fantastic example of that.

Sunak and his wife are reported to be worth £730m, mostly because his wife is the heiress daughter of a tech billionaire.

  • He said as PM he would maintain the policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. He said:

I think it’s absolutely critical that we have control of our borders, and I say that as the child and grandchild of immigrants. This country has a proud history of welcoming people but it’s also vital that we’re in control of who’s coming here.

And, sadly, there is an illegal set of criminal gangs who were causing people to die in pursuit of coming here. We must stop that.

  • He refused to commit to keeping Nadhim Zahawi as chancellor if he became PM. Asked if Zahawi would stay in his post, he replied:

It wouldn’t be appropriate for anybody to start talking about all of those things.

If I’m fortunate enough to be elected and selected as prime minister, I will build a team around me that draws on all the talents of our party.

I don’t cut taxes to win elections, I win elections to cut taxes.

  • He said he was the best candidate to beat Labour at the next election. He said:

I’m convinced that I’m the best person to beat Keir Starmer and the Labour party at the next election.

That claim is half justified by recent polling from Ipsos Mori, which shows more people think he is likely to make a good PM than they think Keir Starmer is, or any of the other Tory leadership candidates are. But the same poll shows that most people do not have view on Penny Mordaunt yet, and that her net score (people who think she would make a good PM, minus those who think she would make a bad PM), which is -4, is higher than Sunak’s, which is -5.

Polling on Tory leadership candidates
Polling on Tory leadership candidates Photograph: Ipsos Mori
  • Sunak played down claims that Sir Gavin Williamson, the former Tory chief whip and former education secretary, is playing a major role in his campaign. Williamson is seen as a devious figure by many Tories, and claims that he has been pulling the strings in the Sunak campaign have been damaging. Sunak said Mel Stride was in charge of the parliamentary aspects of his campaign. He went on:

Like all the members of parliament who are on my team, they are talking to colleagues and making the case for my candidacy because they believe that I am the best person to beat Keir Starmer and the Labour party and I’m really grateful for all their support.

Updated

This is from Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall on Rishi Sunak’s Today interview.

And this is from my colleague Peter Walker.

Truss to launch campaign for Tory leadership with jibe at Mordaunt's inexperience, saying she is ready to be PM 'on day one'

Good morning. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, is officially launching her campaign for the Conservative party leadership this morning but within the last 24 hours she has probably been revising her script quite considerably. When she started planning her campaign, Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, was seen as her main rival. But now the main threat is coming from Penny Mordaunt, and Truss will take a swipe at her by implying she does not have the experience to be PM from day one. (Mordaunt has served in cabinet, but as international development secretary, one of the most junior jobs, for about a year and a half, and as defence secretary for less than three months.)

In her speech at the launch, according to extracts released overnight, Truss will say:

I am ready to be prime minister on day one. I can lead, make tough decisions and rise to the moment.

In her speech she will also talk about wanting to make Britain an “aspiration nation” – while also implying that she was educated at a grim comprehensive school in Leeds, which has led to complaints that she is smearing an establishment with a good reputation.

There are two other important developments this morning in the leadership contest, which will see another round of voting start after lunch.

  • Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, has attacked Mordaunt, saying that she was in practice his deputy in the trade negotiations with the EU last year and that she was not up to the job. He told Talk TV:

I felt she did not master the detail that was necessary in the negotiations last year. She wouldn’t always deliver tough messages to the European Union when that was necessary. And I’m afraid she wasn’t sort of fully accountable, she wasn’t always visible, sometimes I didn’t even know where she was. And I’m afraid this became such a problem that after six months I had to ask the prime minister to move her on and find somebody else to support me.

  • Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor and leadership candidate who came top in the first round of voting yesterday, has given an interview to the Today programme in which he repeatedly sounded evasive. He refused to accept that the government performed a U-turn over free school meals when he was chancellor (even though it did), he refused to say when he realised Boris Johnson was not a good prime minister, and he ducked a question about why he was preparing a campaign website last year. He was also reluctant to discuss what role Gavin Williamson was playing on his campaign, and, when asked if Williamson was a good education secretary, he sidestepped the question.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Liz Truss launches her campaign for the Tory leadership.

10am: Tom Tugendhat, another leadership contender, holds a press briefing.

10.40am: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, holds a press conference where she will publish a new paper on Scottish independence.

11.30am: Conservative MPs start voting in the second ballot for the leadership. Voting closes at 1.30pm.

3pm: Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, announces the result of the second round leadership ballot.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

Updated

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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
“I said, Don’t f**k with me, Phillip! You can’t pull that s**t on me, you a**hole. This is me, Cher, okay?” That time producer Phil Spector pulled a gun on Cher, and Cher was in absolutely no mood for his nonsense
A Public Service Announcement for anyone who needs to hear it: Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to f**k with Cher, ever
Louder
Louder
NBA Champ Jason Williams Says Marijuana Enhances Creativity On Court But Not 'Good Idea' Before Game
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has not been testing players for marijuana use since April 2023. Some questioned the move, while others praised it, including rapper, cannabis entrepreneur and advocate Snoop Dogg. Former NBA player Jason Williams, who played from 1998 to 2011, said even if marijuana had been legal…
Benzinga
Benzinga
Why Ariana Grande will never return The Voice as a coach
The singer was on one season of ‘The Voice’ in 2021
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Sean Penn accuses Academy Awards of cowardice at Marrakech Film Festival
Sean Penn has blasted the organizers of the Oscars of being cowards who, in effect, limit the kind of films that can be funded and made
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
"They wouldn't have a clue." Kiss bassist Gene Simmons believes that no-one aged 20 or younger can name a single song by Nirvana or Pearl Jam
Gene Simmons: "Ask the first young person you meet, 'Name me anybody in Pearl Jam.' Good luck with that"
Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer
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