Politics

After a mad dash back from his Caribbean holiday, a flurry of canvassing, secret summits with rivals Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, and a significant air war campaign, Boris Johnson announced shortly before 9pm last night that he would not run for PM after all. It was the most Boris Johnson way of admitting defeat:

Former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has said he is backing Boris Johnson to return as prime minister despite having previously called for him to resign in the summer. “I’m backing Boris. He got the big calls right, whether it was ordering more vaccines ahead of more waves of Covid, arming Ukraine early against the advice of

Rishi Sunak supporters are claiming that he has the votes to progress to the next stage of the Conservative leadership contest. Those wanting to win the keys to Downing Street have until Monday to secure the backing of 100 MPs, and must meet this threshold to make it onto the ballot paper. This means there

It could be all over on Monday or the Conservatives may be about to mesmerise the nation with another round of vicious infighting. The Conservative Party rules can’t be changed. They are that Conservative MPs draw up a shortlist of two candidates from their number. The 180,000 paid-up and unelected party members then choose between

Rishi Sunak has become the first to receive 100 public endorsements from Tory MPs – enough to meet the threshold for nominations in the leadership race. The news came before a source close to Boris Johnson claimed he had also reached the threshold to reach the ballot, although this has yet to be verified. The

Penny Mordaunt has become the first MP to enter the race to replace Liz Truss as prime minister after her dramatic resignation yesterday. The leader of the Commons announced her candidacy in a tweet on Friday afternoon, saying fellow Conservatives had urged her to stand. Ms Mordaunt, who came third in the last leadership race

Rishi Sunak has announced his bid to become the next Conservative leader and prime minister, six weeks after Liz Truss beat him to the top job. The former chancellor has put himself forward for the second time in a matter of months after the extraordinary resignation of Ms Truss on Thursday, 44 days into her

Candidates to replace Liz Truss as Tory leader will need at least 100 nominations from Conservative MPs, 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady has said. This will rule out a number of candidates from running, and means the maximum number of people able to stand is three. During the last leadership election, Rishi Sunak won

After Wednesday, it’s worth asking: who is in charge? The last 12 hours suggests it’s very hard to say. Few say Liz Truss, since her word is no longer her bond, her writ limited. So what are the other possibilities? Few think it is Mark Fullbrook, the embattled chief of staff, but few believe his

Suella Braverman has resigned from Liz Truss’s government after sending an official document from her personal email – and has taken aim at the prime minister as she departed the Home Office. In her resignation letter sent to the PM on Wednesday, the now former home secretary acknowledged she had breached government security rules, stating:

It’s a sign of how bad things are for the new prime minister that only her third Prime Minister’s Questions is being billed as a potentially defining moment in her short premiership. MPs tell me that how Liz Truss performs at the despatch box against Sir Keir Starmer at their weekly joust will be an

Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford erupted in anger in the Senedd this afternoon as he accused the Conservatives of making a mess of the UK’s budget and reputation. Mr Drakeford raised his voice and pointed his finger in response to questions from leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew RT Davies, about poor ambulance response times.

Trade unions are threatening a winter of mass strikes and a legal battles over proposed anti-strike laws, in the most militant showdown with the government since the 1970s. Opening the delayed TUC conference in Brighton, outgoing general secretary Frances O’Grady claims working families are at breaking point and will lose £4,000 over the next three

Jeremy Hunt has announced he is creating an economic advisory council to assist the government as it seeks to repair the damage caused by last month’s mini-budget. The council’s membership will include Rupert Harrison, who was chief of staff to former chancellor George Osbourne during the austerity era of 2010-2015, and Karen Ward, who advised

After his crisis talks with Liz Truss at Chequers, Jeremy Hunt was photographed being driven from the PM’s country retreat sitting in the back of a government car. Earlier, when the new chancellor was asked in a TV interview who was in charge, him or the PM, he insisted it was her. But MPs believe

Just last month Liz Truss told Britons they could “ride out the storm” in her first speech as prime minister – now she has been warned “the game is up” as rumours swirl of plots to oust her. Tory MPs have started to publicly call for Ms Truss to step down, while former chancellor George

Labour has launched a fresh attack on the Conservative Party with a series of scathing adverts. Sir Keir Starmer’s party will be looking to capitalise on the government’s current leadership crisis and recent unpopular economic polices as it gears up for the next general election. In a set of four damning posters, Labour has taken

Jeremy Hunt has confirmed that Prime Minister Liz Truss’s economic vision is not only dead, but that the immediate actions of this administration will be to do almost exactly the opposite of what the prime minister promised during the summer leadership campaign. This was a cold, hard reality check from a chancellor who is being

The new chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said there “were mistakes” in Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. Speaking to Sky News on Saturday, Mr Hunt said: “It was a mistake when we were going to be asking for difficult decisions across the board on tax and spending to cut the rate of tax paid by

Tory MPs appear to be divided over the future of Liz Truss as prime minister following her major U-turn announcement. Ms Truss reversed a key policy to scrap the planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25% after she sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor. Heated messages were shared in Conservative Party WhatsApp groups after