Conservative party

‘My friends, you have waited for the punchline of this speech’ said Boris Johnson after 11 minutes of what sounded very much like a leadership speech. ‘That having consulted colleagues and in view of the circumstances in parliament I have concluded that person cannot be me.’ Theresa May has been slightly ahead of Boris in the surveys of Tory members and voters so far. Now she is the front runner. But it is worth remembering that Gove always receives a rapt reception at party conference and many Conservatives went into mourning when he was moved from the education brief. Gove has also been the key driver in government of the

Stephen Crabb is the first Tory leadership contender to formally declare his candidacy for the job, with a rousing speech about his working class Conservative values this morning. The Work and Pensions Secretary pitched himself as the candidate who not only understands the people who ‘are really struggling, who look at us all in Westminster and […] see nothing to believe’, but who also understands how to hold the Union together – both of which are rather big claims. He used his now-famous (in Westminster, anyway) backstory as someone born in Scotland and brought up in Wales in a working class household to argue that he was uniquely placed to

Westminster is at its fastest-moving and most unstable for years. Portcullis House and the tea rooms are buzzing with MPs discussing the demise of their leader and who they’ll back in the contest to replace him: and that goes for both main parties, though of course the golden rule of politics still applies, which is that no matter how colossal the Tory mess is, Labour’s will always be gargantuan in comparison. Today the Conservatives decided to move back the date by which their leader must be confirmed to 9 September, which will come as a relief to those Tories who were grumbling about being hauled back from the Mediterranean a

Jo Johnson has declared his support for his brother’s leadership bid. In a statement to The Spectator, the minister for universities and science says: ‘Boris and I were on different side of a hard fought referendum campaign. But it is time to move on, time to unite and time to deliver. I have known my brother for longer than anyone in parliament. He is the great communicator—and I have no doubt at all that he is the person best placed not just to secure a new settlement for Britain in Europe but also to provide the optimistic, confident and outward-looking leadership we will need in months and years to come.’

This morning, Philip Hammond has insisted that those running for the Tory leadership explicitly set out how they intend to leave the EU. The Foreign Secretary told Robert Peston that he wanted to know how they would manage the trade-off between single market access and free movement. Hammond himself appears to favour a version of the Norwegian model; in the single market and accepting free movement. Now, I think we can take this as meaning that Hammond won’t back Boris Johnson. Hammond accused Boris and other Leavers of making ‘contradictory promises’ in the referendum campaign. Though, it is worth remembering that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were both explicit that

Tacitus argued that, after 68, ‘the secret of imperial rule was revealed: an emperor could be made somewhere other than Rome’. It has taken metropolitan observers some time to wake up to the fact the same is true in Britain today. A star can be born far from London. The difference, however, is that not all roads lead to Westminster. It takes time for change to work its way through the system so perhaps it is not surprising that it is only now that we are seeing the fruits of devolution. In their different – very different – ways Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson have each demonstrated that devolution works. It has,