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There are few positions so perilous as being the frontrunner in a party leadership contest. Just being the heir apparent when no contest is happening is dicey enough, with the incumbent leader usually highly susceptible to murmurings from courtiers about your alleged manoeuvrings against him. But once the race is actively underway things get even more
The Tory leadership race is getting increasingly crowded: a dozen candidates are now bidding for the top job. Rishi Sunak remains the front runner, but can he hold off challenges from fellow favourites Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt? Around half of Tory MPs have nailed their colours to the mast; you can read the exhaustive list of
I’ve been thinking for the past couple of days about who can beat Penny Mordaunt in the contest to be the next Tory leader. Despite the shaky start to her campaign, I still think she’s the favourite. Rishi Sunak has too many people trying to stop him; most importantly, a lot of the membership. Truss
When the editor of The Spectator asked me to write about Tom Tugendhat, I initially declined, explaining that doing so would put me in a slightly difficult position. Tom and I have been friends for 20-something years since we met as young journalists via the Scotsman and then Bloomberg’s City of London newsroom. So I can’t
Farewell then, Boris Johnson, and to paraphrase another leader who had rather lost the support of his front bench, what an artist dies with him. Johnson was the most amusing prime minister in living memory, but also the most historically aware. The first British political leader since Harold MacMillan to read classics, he was hugely
The Tory leadership contest is a very crowded place – with Liz Truss overnight becoming the tenth candidate to declare (with Rehman Chishti becoming the eleventh a few minutes later). But it could be significantly slimmed down by this evening. Monday marks the day of the elections for the 1922 executive made up of Tory
I was in Hyde Park on Friday watching an open-air Pixies show with very great delight when somewhere between ‘Vamos’ and ‘Debaser’ one of my companions bid fair to harsh my buzz by asking what I reckoned to the Tory leadership contest. Well, goodness. I mumbled something about not really having a dog in the
Liz Truss has become the tenth candidate to enter the Tory leadership race. Announcing her intentions in an op-ed for the Daily Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary has promised if successful to ‘fight the election as a Conservative and govern as a Conservative’. As for her pitch to MPs and members, Truss joins the list of
Michael Gove has endorsed Kemi Badenoch for Tory leader. Badenoch, who was one of his junior ministers at the Department for Levelling Up, is described by Gove as ‘Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare’ and she has a ‘focus intellect and no-bulls**t drive’. Gove’s support is a coup for Badenoch. It is not every day that someone throws
The Tory leadership contest is yet to officially begin, but things are already turning nasty. As well as reports in the papers of dirty dossiers on candidates, Tory grandees have come out to call for a ceasefire in which Boris Johnson loyalists stop attacking Rishi Sunak. Now a row has broken out over Penny Mordaunt’s
Is the leadership race turning toxic already? Three days in and Rishi Sunak has been the target of a vicious private memo while Nadhim Zahawi is fighting off questions about his tax arrangements. Now it seems that Penny Mordaunt is the latest candidate in the firing line; namely over her past support for trans rights.
The elephant isn’t just in the room. It is trumpeting loudly but it is greeted with bemusement, denial, or polite silence. I am talking about the Tory leadership race which is full of what the renowned fox-killer now apparently calls ‘brown’ people and those other odd chaps, called women. The Tories can always claim the
The Telegraph has got hold of a zinger of a private memo currently doing the rounds on Tory MPs’ WhatsApp groups. The 421-word dossier, which sums up all of the ex-chancellor’s supposed errors during his two-year tenure, has been published by the paper’s associate editor Camilla Tominey. The document lays into Sunak, accusing the favourite to replace Boris Johnson
A cabinet minister yesterday observed to me that they would scream if they heard another person suggest the Tory leadership race was like the Grand National. Rather defensively, given it is one of my favourite analogies, I asked what they thought would work better. A little while later, they messaged back: demolition derby; a reference
Rather unsurprisingly, the bulk of MPs who have declared their leadership bids so far are promising lower taxes. Also unsurprisingly, very few details are on offer explaining how they’d do it. In Nadhim Zahawi’s early pitch to the public — he is expected to share more tomorrow — he’s asserted that ‘taxes for individuals, families
We have seen two Tory Leadership bids this morning that aim to show they can bridge the party divides. Jeremy Hunt, who campaigned for Remain and sits for a Lib Dem facing southern seat, has announced that Esther McVey, Brexiteer and northern seat, will be his deputy PM. As he put it, John Prescott to his Tony
At the very top end of politics there is a vital distinction that is underappreciated whenever the case for change is being assessed. It is the difference between plausible and compelling. Tony Blair in his pomp was the latter, Gordon Brown never more than the former. Margaret Thatcher had only to be plausible to win
Sajid Javid – I gave Boris the benefit of the doubt again and again The starting gun has been fired in the race for the next Prime Minister. Ten Conservatives have already thrown their hat into the ring, with Penny Mordaunt becoming the latest to declare as of this morning. Sophie Raworth spoke to the
Penny Mordaunt, the second-favourite to be the next Prime Minister, has declared that she’s running – via a video where she barely features. It’s a mush of Tory visual cliches with a Little Britain-style voiceover man talking about service, the future etc with pictures of flags, soldiers, ships and (of course) Thatcher. But it doesn’t
All the candidates in this Tory leadership contest will have to pay tribute to the importance of standards in public life, given what did for Boris Johnson. For some of them, this will probably be as meaningful as posting a #bekind meme on social media. But if there isn’t a wider reckoning over standards and
Who will be the candidate of the right in this contest? There is this morning a mighty tussle on to be the standard bearer of the right in this contest. Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, is the preferred choice of many in the ERG. She has the backing of Steve Baker and as a Spartan
Penny Mordaunt has had a good start to the leadership race, storming into second place with 16 names, even though she is yet to declare. But is the Portsmouth MP worried about her past views coming back to haunt her? Mr S was surprised to see Mordaunt fire off a late-night ten-part Twitter thread shortly
Growing up, I didn’t really think about the police until I got caught shoplifting at the age of 14. Separated from my comrades in the five-finger-discount crusade, I was stuck in a cell for half an hour but the earache only started when my furious parents came to collect me. I almost asked the kind
It’s day three of the Tory leadership race. As things stand there are nine declared candidates: Rishi Sunak, Nadhim Zahawi, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Sajid Javid, Tom Tugendhat, Jeremy Hunt, Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt. All eyes are on Liz Truss to see whether she will choose to launch today or tomorrow, ahead of the
There’s a new Vice-Chancellor taking over at Oxford later this year. She’s Irene Tracey, warden of Merton College, and an expert on pain. Rather brilliantly, she wrote a Ladybird book about it, as well as specialist research, so she’s good at communication. More importantly, she’s an Oxford person all through, with only a postgraduate stint
Thanks to Brexit, we are now a free nation. But let’s not just talk about the opportunities that follow: let’s take them. If a young boy who came here aged 11 without a word of English, can serve at the highest levels of Her Majesty’s Government and run to be the next Prime Minister, anything
Nadhim Zahawi, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt have declared their candidacy this evening. Ben Wallace, who had topped the poll among Tory activists, has announced that he won’t be standing in the Tory leadership race. Rishi Sunak is now leading the field in both MPs’ endorsement – he has 24 – and bookmaker’s odds (below). Sajid Javid has
Shinzo Abe, perhaps the most significant Japanese politician of the last 50 years, has been assassinated. The killing was carried out by Tetsuya Yamagamu, a youngish and apparently disgruntled former employee of the Japan’s Maritime Self Defence Force. It was a brutal and sordid end to what was an important if not uncontroversial life. Shinzo
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James Forsyth speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls about what Boris Johnson has achieved and if he will leave a significant imprint as a result of his time in office.
There’s only one candidate for prime minister with the guts to dismantle the self-loathing culture of identity politics that is destroying Britain. She’s uniquely qualified to take on the challenge because she’s a black woman raised in Nigeria who studied for her A-levels while working in McDonald’s. And she may succeed because, in addition to
Will this leadership contest provide a debate? The Tories got into this mess because have spent years asking who can bring them power, rather than what they stand for or who has the best ideas for the country. The leadership contest should come in two stages: first discussing what has gone wrong and then next
Oh dear. It seems that Britain’s favourite kimono-wearing, fox-murdering, bat-wielding loudmouth lawyer has done it again. The Conservative party is shaping up for a leadership contest between the most diverse range of candidates ever, including five MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds (Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, Rishi Sunak, Nadhim Zahawi and Sajid Javid). There are also
The ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine isn’t a war – there’s a law and a possible maximum sentence (though no one seems to have faced it yet) of 15 years in prison to stop you claiming it is in Russia. Yet Russia does seem to be inching towards a wartime economy, for all Vladimir Putin’s
Whatever else will be said about him in the days and years to come, Boris Johnson will leave No. 10 having achieved the full extent of his policy ambitions: become Prime Minister. After a little under three years in office, Johnson has been reduced to the status of squatter in Downing Street, pottering about with