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Washington Bureau Chief
Kemi Badenoch has warned that Tory members will be “very angry” if MPs take part in a “stitch-up” to lend votes to other candidates to keep her out of the top two in the leadership contest.
Allies of Badenoch have claimed she is the victim of a “dirty tricks” campaign, with Robert Jenrick in effect lending votes to James Cleverly, which the former has strongly denied.
Asked if she believed Jenrick was taking this approach, she told The Times: “I think that may be happening. But what else is happening is that there is tactical voting. We’re also operating in an environment where people have friends — people who they’ve worked with, people they owe favours to. So that will be happening.”
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has claimed he considered launching an “aquatic raid” on a warehouse in the Netherlands to retrieve Covid vaccine doses amid a row with Europe.
The former prime minister wrote in his new book Unleashed that he considered sending the British Army on a daring raid to snatch the vaccines from an EU warehouse, although he rejected the idea, saying: “The whole thing was nuts.”
Mr Johnson’s book, Unleashed, is being serialised in the Daily Mail and has seen him defend his actions during “Partygate”, which eventually led to his resignation after he was found to have lied over flouting lockdown rules.
Revealed: Starmer’s ‘three pillar’ blueprint to rebuild EU ties with youth mobility a negotiating chip
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Security ramps up ahead of Tory conference in Birmingham
Security measures have been ramped up around Birmingham city centre as the Conservative Party Conference gets under way.
The annual conference is an opportunity for the four candidates in the Tory leadership race to convince members to pledge their support. Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat are all hoping to take over from Rishi Sunak, with MPs due to vote for the final two after they return to parliament.
Armed police and high-visibility patrols are visible around the International Convention Centre (ICC), with access to roads around the centre blocked until Friday, 4 October.
Access to Broad Street, Great Charles Street, Street, Sandpits, Parade, Clement Street, St Vincent Street, Sheepcote Street and Oozells Way will be restricted so those travelling in via bus or tram are being encouraged to allow more time for journeys.
Bus services affected include 9, 12, 12A, 13, 13A, 126, X8, X10, 23 and 24.
Resetting UK-EU relationship will ‘not be easy’, Starmer says
Securing a closer trading relationship with the European Union will not be easy but it is possible, Sir Keir Starmer has said.
The Prime Minister will head to Brussels next week for talks with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen as he pushes for a “reset” in the UK’s relationship with the EU.
Sir Keir also believes more can be done on defence and security and tackling the migrant crisis.
“I want to ensure that we’ve got a closer trading relationship if we can,” the Prime Minister said.
“I think it’s possible. I’m not going to pretend it’s easy, but I think it’s possible.”
Is the Tory conference worth paying attention to this year?
Dazed, confused, but with more than a hint of defiance (foolish or otherwise), the Conservatives meet for their party conference in Birmingham with some important business to transact.
The official theme is “Review and Rebuild”, which sounds about right. Given their fratricidal tendencies, however, and the spectral presence of Boris Johnson through the medium of his memoir Unleashed, it could easily descend into acrimony. The Tories may not be too relevant right now, but it will be entertaining…
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Boris Johnson thought he ‘might have carked it’ in intensive care
Former prime minister Boris Johnson believed he “might have carked it” when he was in intensive care with Covid without the “skills and experience” of his nurses, according to an extract of his memoir.
Mr Johnson spent several days in intensive care with Covid in April 2020. In the extract of his Unleashed book published in the Daily Mail, he described not wanting to fall asleep on his first night in intensive care “partly in case I never woke up”.
He also recalled feeling “rotten” with “guilt” and “political embarrassment” in the days before he was admitted to hospital.
The nurses caring for Mr Johnson on his first night in intensive care were “Jenny from New Zealand and Luis from Portugal,” he recalled.
Following his release from hospital, the then prime minister spent some time at Chequers with his now-wife Carrie, and he recalled joining in with the clap for the NHS on a Thursday evening.
Robert Jenrick says he wants to ‘put Nigel Farage out of business’
Immigration has so far featured heavily in the leadership campaign, with frontrunner Mr Jenrick making it a centrepiece of his campaign and arguing the party’s defeat was because it broke its promises on immigration.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, he said he wanted to “put Nigel Farage out of business” and described Reform as “a symptom not a cause”.
He said: “It exists in its current state because my party failed. We made promises on issues that millions of people…small ‘c’ conservatives like me, care passionately about, like controlled and reduced immigration, like securing our borders, and we didn’t deliver on those promises.”
UK government urge Britons to leave Lebanon
Britons have been urged to leave Lebanon amid warnings the country faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” following the latest round of Israeli air strikes.
On Friday, the Foreign Office warned that British nationals should “leave now” as series of massive explosions levelled multiple apartment buildings in Beirut.
In a statement, the Foreign Office said it was “working to increase capacity” and secure seats for British nationals on flights out of the country.
In his own address to the UN on Thursday, the Prime Minister said: “I call on Israel and Hezbollah. Stop the violence. Step back from the brink.
“We need to see an immediate ceasefire to provide space for a diplomatic settlement and we are working with all partners to that end.”
Badenoch says she doesn’t mind if candidates ‘have a pop’ at her
Kemi Badenoch has hit back at criticism that she took a holiday with her family during the start of her campaign, saying that her husband and children are the “most important thing”.
She apologised to members for being unable to make the event in Yarm, north Yorkshire, as a result of long-standing family commitments in August.
“I heard from members who were there saying they didn’t like that,” Badenoch says. “So I don’t mind if other candidates have a pop at me because they’re showing more about themselves than they are about me. I’m a family person. My family is the most important thing.
“If my husband called me now and said, ‘I don’t want to do this any more, you need to pull out of this leadership contest’, I’d say OK. Because without him I can’t do this. Without my children and my husband my life doesn’t really have any meaning.”
Tories facing ‘dire’ finances as businesses and donors switch to Farage and Starmer
In the weeks before the conference in Birmingham, set to get underway on Sunday, it was claimed that the party was still struggling to find a sponsor for its VIP blue room, previously sponsored by the retail company Regent Street Group.
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Tories spent too long ‘appeasing Reform voters’, warns Theresa May
The Conservative Party has “failed to see the threat from the Liberal Democrats” while focusing too much on Reform, Theresa May has warned.
Writing in The Times ahead of the party’s annual conference in Birmingham, Baroness May said the remaining candidates for the Tory leadership could “play into Reform’s hands” by failing to understand why they lost the general election.
The former prime minister said the Conservatives lost power in July not due to policy, but because the party had “trashed our brand”, losing its reputation for “integrity and competence”.
Blaming the Partygate scandal and Liz Truss’s mini-budget, Lady May added the Tories had spent “too long tacking to the right in order to appease potential Reform voters” and “forgot that we are not a right-wing party but a centre-right party”.
Lady May compared the Conservatives’ strategy to last month’s 1,500m Olympic final in Paris, in which Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen was too focused on defeating Britain’s Josh Kerr that he allowed American Cole Hocker to come through on the inside and take gold.
She said: “Just as Ingebrigtsen was focused on Kerr and failed to see that his action against him would open up other threats, so the Conservative Party has been focused on Reform and failed to see the threat from the Liberal Democrats – losing 60 seats to them at the election.”
