UK Politics

Tory candidates say no to Boris Johnson cabinet returnThe final televised debate in the Tory leadership contest has been cancelled by Sky News, after Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss pulled out of the event.The pair were said to be keen to focus instead on the final ballot of Tory MPs on Wednesday, but there are reported to be fears that the previous two debates have inflicted “incredible” damage on the Conservative Party.Ms Truss and Mr Sunak butted heads on Sunday night in the second televised debate, with the ex-chancellor accusing the foreign secretary of offering “socialist” proposals in her bid for No 10.He is reported by The Times to have turned to her after the ITV-hosted debate ended, to ask: “Why are we doing this?”Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner described the candidates as “fighting like rats in a sack”, calling the contest “scarily embarrassing”.Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was “astonished” at the pair’s attempt to avoid scrutiny, adding: “Pulling out of a TV debate when you want to be prime minister doesn’t show very much confidence.”RecommendedShow latest update

1658155258Sunak supporter predicts ‘tough day’ for his leadership campaignMonday is going to be “quite a tough day” for Rishi Sunak’s team, an MP supporting the former chancellor’s bid for No 10 said ahead of the leadership ballot – and with none of Suella Braverman’s votes coming to him this evening.They said Mr Sunak gave a “colleague-focused pitch on campaigning” in the 1922 Committee hustings.The supporter also said that candidates are having to answer a variety of questions in the hustings, including on uniting the Conservative party after the scramble to replace Boris Johnson.They told reporters: “Today is going to be quite a tough day for us in terms of the ballot, because if you look at the free votes sort of floating around from the candidate that got knocked out last week, I think it’s probably fair to say that we’re not going to pick up very many of those, I suspect.“So assuming everybody else votes for who they voted for… I wouldn’t expect our vote to massively increase today.”They mooted the prospect of further televised debates taking part once the candidates are whittled down to two.“Perhaps better off happening later when there are fewer candidates… I would expect there to be more debates,” they said.Emily Atkinson18 July 2022 15:401658154418Keir Starmer rules out ‘any agreement’ with the Lib Dems after next electionKeir Starmer has ruled out striking “any” agreement with the Liberal Democrats after the next general election.The Labour leader had previously ruled out an electoral pact or coalition with the Scottish National Party, saying there would be “no deal going into the general election and no deal other side”.But he had not previously explicitly ruled out working with the Liberal Democrats, either as part of a coalition or under a looser supply and confidence arrangement.Our policy correspondent Jon Stone has the details: More

The government of outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson will face a vote of confidence today amid renewed calls for him to step down and pass the reins of power to a caretaker leader.The vote is scheduled for 10pm tonight and, should the government be defeated, it is highly likely that a general election would be triggered.But in order for the confidence vote to be lost, a significant number of Tory MPs would need to vote against it, or at least abstain – an unlikely scenario given the resignation of Mr Johnson, the subdued anger directed at his premiership, and the brutal leadership contest consuming the Conservative party.Tonight’s unusual government motion may offer Mr Johnson a final chance to defend his record before MPs after the string of tumultuous events which led to his downfall – the final straw being his handling of accusations of sexual misconduct against his former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher.Mr Johnson had been expected to open the debate – although it is not clear whether he will now do so, or whether he will leave it to another minister.RecommendedIt comes after Labour said it would seek to hold a confidence vote after Mr Johnson announced he would stay on as party leader until the autumn when he would make way for his successor.But the government refused to accept the wording of the Labour motion, which expressed no confidence in the government and the PM, effectively forcing Tory MPs to go on record saying they still had confidence in Mr Johnson if they wanted to avoid an election.In its place, ministers tabled a motion of their own after Commons deputy speaker Nigel Evans told the two parties to resolve the matter.Ahead of the vote, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who has tabled an amendment demanding Mr Johnson resign immediately, said: “Conservative MPs have the chance to show they are listening to the people by getting rid of this failing prime minister.“Boris Johnson should go now and, when a new Conservative leader is in place, we should have a general election so that people can kick out these Conservatives once and for all.”It comes after Conservative rivals clashed over tax policies in the second live debate on ITV this evening in their bid to be the new prime minister.Rishi Sunak pushed back against Liz Truss after she accused him of raising taxes to the “highest level in 70 years”, adding that raising taxes would “choke off” economic growth.RecommendedMr Sunak responded: “I’d love to stand here and say, ‘I’ll cut this tax, I’ll cut that tax, and it’ll all be okay’. But you know what? It won’t… This something for nothing economics isn’t conservative – it’s socialism.”The five contenders to replace Boris Johnson were asked whether they would let him sit at their cabinet table during the ITV leadership debate, and none of them raised their hands. More

Sky News has been forced to cancel tomorrow’s Tory leadership debate after Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss pulled out ahead of the final ballot of Conservative MPs.It comes after the pair clashed in the second televised debate of the contest last night, with the former chancellor accusing the foreign secretary of offering “socialist” proposals in her bid to succeed Boris Johnson in No 10.In the heated exchanges, Ms Truss also accused her former cabinet colleague of risking recession, adding: “Rishi, you have raised taxes to the highest levels in 70 years. That is not going to drive economic growth”.A source in Mr Sunak’s campaign told The Independent he would not take part in Tuesday’s debate, adding: “We are very happy to do more debates if we are lucky enough to get to the next stage, including Sky News”.It is also understood Ms Truss had made clear she would only participate in the debate if all candidates have committed to doing so.In respsonse, the broadcaster said the event has been cancelled, saying: “Two of the three candidates currently leading in the MPs’ ballot – Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss – have confirmed to Sky News that they do not want to take part”.Recommended“Conservative MPs are said to be concerned about the damage the debates are doing to the image of the Conservative Party, exposing disagreements and splits within the party. “Both are very welcome to taking part in future Sky News televised debates.”The leadership contenders – Mr Sunak, Ms Truss, Penny Mordaunt, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch – have already taken part in debates on Channel 4 and ITV which have seen the would-be prime ministers taking primetime pot shots at each other.In response to the decision by Sky News to cancel the debate, Penny Mordaunt’s campaign team said: “Throughout this contest she has never dodged media or shied away from broadcast interviews and debates – people deserve to hear from their leaders. “Its a shame some colleagues cannot find a way to debate one another in a civil way. Last night Penny showed she is the only candidate with a plan to unite the party, defeat Labour and lead the country forward”.The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also said he was “astonished” by the candidates withdrawing from a televised debate, saying it demonstrated a lack of “confidence”.He said: “I’m astonished that those that want to be prime minister of the United Kingdom are pulling out of debates and out of scrutiny.Recommended“I can see based on what I’ve seen in the debates so far why they want to do so because this is a party that is out of ideas, out of purpose, they’re tearing each other apart.”On Monday MPs in the Conservative Party are set to hold a third ballot in the Tory leadership contest, eliminating one more contender with the smallest number of votes. By Wednesday the candidates will be whittled down to two that will face a vote of the Tory membership over the summer. More

Foreign secretary Liz Truss formally launched her bid to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister and Tory leader on Thursday morning, pledging to set the economy on an “upward trajectory” by the time of the next general election in 2024.”We have to level with the British public that our economy will not get back on track overnight,” she said frankly. “Times are going to be tough, but I know that I can get us on an upward trajectory by 2024.”Positioning herself as an economic libertarian, she outlined plans to cancel ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak’s rises in corporation tax and National Insurance, pledged to increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by the end of the decade and endorsed home secretary Priti Patel’s widely loathed Rwanda deportation scheme for asylum seekers.Interestingly, she explained away her refusal to join the mass resignations in protest at Mr Johnson’s premiership by saying she was “a loyal person”, a clear dig at Mr Sunak, whose decision to quit alongside health secretary Sajid Javid triggered the deluge of resignations that ultimately led to his downfall.She has certainly been a prominent backer of Mr Johnson in the past and her campaign has already attracted the support of dogged Johnsonites Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg.RecommendedThat said, Ms Truss has previously made no secret of her ambitions, holding “fizz with Liz” socials for her colleagues and Monday surgeries in the House of Commons tea room open to MPs with grievances to air, making it clear she sees herself as leadership material.While Mr Sunak faces awkward questions about precisely when he set up his campaign website and comes under fire for propping up Mr Johnson throughout the Partygate furore only to then turn on him, he nevertheless still leads the race ahead of both junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt and Ms Truss, who clearly has her work cut out if she hopes to beat them to Downing Street.Mary Elizabeth Truss was born in Oxford on 26 July 1975, her left-wing father John Kenneth Truss a professor of pure mathematics at the University of Leeds and her mother Priscilla Mary a nurse, teacher and member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.The family moved to Scotland when Ms Truss was four years old and she attended West Primary School in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and then Roundhay School, a comprehensive in Leeds.At 18, she studied politics, philosophy and economics at Merton College, Oxford, where she was, surprisingly, president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats.She switched sides and joined the Conservative Party in 1996, the same year she graduated and became a commercial manager at Shell, later serving as economic director of Cable & Wireless and becoming a qualified management accountant.Ms Truss married another accountant, Hugh O’Leary, in 2000 and the couple has two daughters.She entered politics professionally when she ran as the Tory candidate for South West Norfolk in the 2010 general election, winning the seat and holding it ever since.In Westminster, she has held a string of jobs: parliamentary under-secretary of state for childcare and education; secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs; secretary of state for justice; lord chancellor; chief secretary to the treasury (in which she was succeeded by Mr Sunak); secretary of state for international trade and president of the board of trade. More

Rishi Sunak is vowing to fast-track the ripping up of EU rules on data, clinical trials and financial services, to underline his Brexit credentials in the Tory leadership race.The former chancellor would decide within 100 days which of a mountain of 2,400 outstanding laws and regulations should disappear – also promising a “Big Bang 2.0” for the City of London.The move comes as new polling suggests Mr Sunak is the overwhelming choice of voters in the constituencies the Conservatives must retain in order to win the next general election.The public prefers him in 76 per cent of the 365 seats the party won in 2019, the survey suggests – leaving rivals Tom Tugendhat (19 per cent) and Penny Mordaunt (5 per cent) trailing badly.Liz Truss – who is floundering in the race after being judged to have lost the first TV debate – and Kemi Badenoch both failed to top the table in any of the seats, J.L. Partners found.RecommendedMr Sunak drew a sharp contrast with Remain-backer Ms Truss, by pointing out he broke with the Tory leadership to campaign for Leave despite being warned “my political career would end”.“As prime minister, I would go further and faster in using the freedoms Brexit has given us to cut the mass of EU regulations and bureaucracy holding back our growth,” he said.The policy is unveiled after Mr Sunak scored a success with endorsement by the figure seen as the party’s ‘Mr North’, the influential Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen.However, the assault on EU laws will trigger a fresh clash with Brussels if it leads to lower regulatory standards, flouting pledges made when the Brexit trade deal was signed.Last month, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, Maros Sefcovic, warned of “consequences” if the promised level playing field is tilted, saying: “We will therefore be watching developments closely.”In other developments in the race, ahead of a second TV clash on Sunday evening:* Ms Mordaunt, the favourite of Tory members according to a separate poll, came under fire for her support of homeopathy on the NHS from critics of alternative medicine.* Ms Truss floated another big tax cut, to help people take work breaks for childcare or as carers, despite Mr Sunak’s criticism that her economic plans are “a fairytale”.* Mr Tugendhat – the contender most likely to fall in Monday’s third ballot – insisted he will not drop out before then, saying: “I have never turned down a challenge because the odds were against me. I don’t plan to start now.”* Labour demanded that the candidates come clean on the spending cuts required to deliver the promised “billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts”.* The Liberal Democrats urged them to rule out a cabinet role for Boris Johnson to ensure they can begin “mending our broken politics”.Mr Sunak remains the favourite candidate of Conservative MPs, ahead of further ballots from Monday to whittle down the five survivors to a final two by Wednesday.But the winner – and the next prime minister – will then be chosen by the 180,000-odd Tory members before Mr Johnson leaves Downing Street on 6 September.The outgoing government is already planning a bonfire of EU “retained law” using, controversially, backstage regulations instead of allowing full scrutiny and votes.The former chancellor said he would accelerate the process, pointing to “burdensome” financial services regulations and promising to “make London once again the world’s leading financial centre by 2027”.Mr Sunak would also “remove the burdens” of EU data laws that he argued are “stopping British tech companies from innovating, and public services from being able to share data to clamp down on crime”.Third, he would “speed up our clinical trials approval process”, by creating a single approval service, pointing to the success of the Covid vaccine rollout.RecommendedMr Sunak said: “In 2016, I was told by my party leadership that if I backed Brexit, my political career would end before it had even begun. I backed Brexit regardless because I knew it was the right thing for the country.“We need to capitalise on these opportunities by ditching the mass of unnecessary regulations and low-growth mentality we’ve inherited from the EU.” More

Ministers are poised to break a promise to give MPs a final say before approving the controversial post-Brexit trade deal with Australia, sparking fresh anger. The agreement – which will punish the farming and food sectors, on the government’s own figures – will clear parliament on Wednesday under an obscure behind closed doors process.In February, a trade minister pledged what he called “the Grimstone rule”, laying down for “ratification not to take place” without a full debate by MPs, if requested. The Commons trade committee has led calls for such a debate, as well as criticising its inability to scrutinise the deal properly, but MPs will leave for their summer holidays without it taking place. Campaigners for fair trade and the environment accused ministers of “running down the clock” before ratification under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. RecommendedRuth Bergan, director of the Trade Justice Movement, urged MPs to demand an emergency debate before Wednesday, saying: “This government has been absolutely shameless in ignoring calls from parliament for more scrutiny.”Nick Dearden, of Global Justice Now, said: “The UK stands on the brink of approving its first new trade deal for decades – one that will threaten thousands of British farming jobs – with barely a murmur.”And Dr Nick Palmer, head of Compassion in World Farming UK, warned: “Free trade agreements without adequate safeguards will negatively impact the UK’s current animal welfare standards for decades to come – completely undermining our hard-won regulations and seriously undercutting higher welfare, pasture-based farmers.”New polling commissioned by the first two groups found that 78 per cent of Britons want MPs to debate the pros and cons of new trade deals before they come into force. And 70 per cent believe parliament should be guaranteed a vote on whether or not a trade deal goes ahead, the Yonder Consulting survey found.The deal has huge political significance for the government – as the first post-Brexit agreement with a new partner – but is forecast to add just 0.08 per cent to the economy and not until 2035.Farmers are angry over the scrapping of tariffs on imported beef and lamb, up to a “cap” on sales many times the current level of Australian meat sold in this country.The government’s own impact assessment revealed the deal will cost farmers and food producers almost £300m, despite Boris Johnson’s vow to “protect” them. There is also anger over the UK secretly dropping a pledge to bind Australia to the 1.5C global temperature rise target at the heart of the last year’s Cop26 climate negotiations. A Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that Liz Truss – the then-trade secretary from 2019 to 2021 and now Tory leadership contender – received detailed warnings about the harsh impact on the farming and food sectors.RecommendedHowever, the forecasts of losses – from both the Australia and New Zealand agreements – were kept secret when talks were launched in 2020.The Department for International Trade (DIT) did not respond to the criticism that the promise of a debate had been broken, but argued parliament was given “six months to scrutinise the legal text”. More

Conservative leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt was accused by her rivals of misleading the public during a feisty TV debate, as she claimed polling showed that only she could win the next general election.All four of the other candidates pushed back immediately against her assertion – crying out that it was “not true” to say polling showed she alone could triumph against Keir Starmer’s Labour party.Ms Mordaunt told the ITV debate: “I think there’s a couple of things we need in order to win the next general election – one of them is me as the prime minister.”The trade minister added: “Because the polling shows that I’m the only one that can beat Keir Starmer and take the fight to Labour … I beat him all over the country.”Her astonished rivals all denied the truth of her claim, with former chancellor Rishi Sunak heard shouting: “Penny that’s completely not true! Not true.”Tom Tugendhat, the moderate candidate who has won the backing of many red wall MPs, laughed and said: “Penny, I respect you deeply, but that’s just not true.”RecommendedThe ex-chancellor also lashed out at Ms Mordaunt after she said tax cuts could be paid for by easing fiscal rules so government borrowing could fund day-to-day spending.“It’s not just wrong, it’s dangerous,” said Mr Sunak. “You know what? Even Jeremy Corbyn didn’t suggest that we should go that far … If we’re not for sound money, what is the point of the Conservative Party?”Ms Mordaunt – only second to Mr Sunak in the push to make it to the final two after the second ballot of MPs – also warned her rivals to not indulge in “smears” following fresh claims about her views on transgender issues.The Sunday Times said it had seen government papers which appeared to suggest Ms Mordaunt was in favour of removing at least one element of the medical process required for transgender people to legally transition.But Ms Mordaunt told the BBC that she had never advocated ending the requirement for trans people to obtain a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before they could legally change gender.Tory rival Kemi Badenoch claimed that she had been responsible for reversing a policy on transgender people after Ms Mordaunt had left her position as equalities minister. “Why was the policy what is was?” she asked.The trade minister fired back: “This whole thing is unedifying. I would say to all four of my colleagues – I know why this is being done. All attempts to paint me as an out of touch individual will fail.”Ms Mordaunt also described her own bombastic campaign video as “legendary” during the angry debate on Sunday night. “My now legendary campaign video did not feature me at all,” she claimed – despite the fact her voiceover closes the video clip.Earlier on Sunday, Ms Mordaunt repeated her notorious claim from the 2016 Brexit referendum that the UK was unable to stop Turkey joining the EU – insisting the veto would not have been used.RecommendedAppearing on the BBC Sunday Morning programme, she was accused of ignoring “actual facts” that the EU treaty granted a block on new members.Confronted with an interview from the 2016 Brexit referendum – when the Leave campaign was seeking to stir up alarm about migrants from Turkey – Ms Mordaunt replied: “The clip says it as I see it.” More