Conservative mayor Lord Houchen called for “civility” in the upcoming Tory leadership contest, shortly after Suella Braverman’s made some eyebrow-raising comments about the party’s direction.
The former home secretary and current backbencher – who is expected to run as Conservative leader – criticised people who lean further to centre over the weekend.
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She told The Telegraph: “If we don’t recover the votes we deliberately, and arrogantly, spurned, we will turn the Conservative Party into the 21st Century version of the 20th Century Liberal Party.
“We can do better than being a collection of fanatical, irrelevant, centrist cranks, who make it our business to insult our should-be voters for not being as smug and self-righteous as we are.”
Asked what he made of these comments on Sky News on Sunday, Houchen said the Tory party leadership should not be based on the past, but the future.
He also there should not be any “blue-on-blue attacks”.
Houchen added: “If we want to spend the next two, three, four, five months fighting with each other that goes to the cause of the election defeat just two weeks ago.
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“And I would implore Suella, as well as every other leadership contender, to conduct this leadership contest with civility. Let’s come together and let’s offer a positive option to the country.”
He said voters “want a party that isn’t going to fight like cats in a sack”, adding that the electorate thought the Tories cared more about “in-fighting and positioning within the Conservative Party and within the government than caring about our country”.
The mayor suggested any future Tory leader needs to rule out working with Reform too, as they are a “symptom not a cause” of the problem.
But Braverman called for a deal with the populist party only a few weeks ago.
Speaking to GB Newsearlier this month, she said there was “only room for one Conservative Party on the right of British politics”.
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The backbencher said: “There’s very little I disagree with when it comes to Nigel Farage and I met thousands of people throughout this campaign, and many, many people said to me, I’m a lifelong Tory voter, but I’m going to vote Reform.”
“They are feeling betrayed. They feel let down. They feel politically homeless because of our failures,” she added.
“So we have to address the issue of Reform. I’m not really interested in the form of what that takes, but we need to find an accommodation with Reform, with Nigel Farage, so that we can take the fight to Labour and win the next election.”
A top Tory has been called out for interrupting a cabinet minister and heckling jim from the dispatch box.
Shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins, who is expected to run for the party leadership, had to be rebuked by the deputy speaker for her “abominable” behaviour in the Commons.
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On Friday afternoon, the new environment, food and rural affairs secretary Steve Reed began his first speech as a member of government by talking about the Labour’s plan to “get Britain building again”.
It was part of the parliamentary debate on the King’s Speech.
But, he was interrupted repeatedly by Tories – first by Tory backbencher and former party chair Richard Holden, who stood up to indicate he wanted to speak.
But Reed refused to give way, saying there was not enough time for Holden’s speech and that other “members should have spoken for less time” earlier in the three-hour debate.
Reed then attacked the Conservatives for neglected parts of the country.
The shadow housing, communities and local government secretary, Kemi Badenoch, who is also expected to try out for Tory leader, then attempted to cut in.
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But Reed said: “I am very sorry but there are only three minutes left and I need to cover the points that have been raised. They had their time.”
He resumed by talking about how Labour plans to increase the number of mental health professionals.
Atkins then jumped up and leant across the despatch box while shouting at Reed, seemingly irate.
The deputy speaker Sir Christopher Chope had to shout: “Order. The right honourable member for Louth and Horncastle [Atkins] has behaved abominably.”
According to The Guardian, a spokesperson for Atkins’ office said: “Conservative MPs were trying to get answers about their budgets for farming, flood defences and food security, which the minister ignored.
“She will always stand up fearlessly for farmers and our rural area in Westminster, even if that means a rare admonishment from the Chair.”
Reed wrapped up his speech by reeling off the “Tories’ failure”, calling his opponents “the party of broken dreams”.
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Closing the debate, Reed said: “After 14 years of chaos, there is once again hope for our environment, hope for our countryside and hope for our rural communities. I welcome the king’s speech, I recommend it to this house.”
Over the weekend, clips of this exchange were picked up by other MPs….
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This happened during my first experience of a debate in the chamber. The behaviour of several Conservative MPs was appalling. After the debate, I asked a group of them why they behaved that way. I was accused of rudeness myself for having the temerity to ask. Absolutely shocking. https://t.co/PuS57iyTqI
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Liz Truss has spoken up once again about her name appearing in an official briefing document this week, claiming this should be a “matter of deep concern to the British public”.
Her “disastrous” mini-Budget was referenced repeatedly in the notes, which still are available on the official government website.
Case has since directed officials to remove the Truss’s name.
But less than 24 hours later, the ex-PM published yet another letter asking him to investigate further about how her name appeared in the official documents, with eight follow-up questions.
She asked: “Have you opened an investigation into how this happened?
“Who was the senior civil servant who gave final sign-off to the document?
“How many other civil servants had sight of the errant pages before they went to press?”
She also asked if there was a “breach of the Civil Service code” by mentioning her name and if any civil servants found to be responsible would be held to account.
“How many physical copies of the errant document were printed and have you made efforts to recover and pulp unissued copies of it?” Truss added.
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She also asked if the opinion of a think tank attacking a politician could be regarded as a “key fact” in a document, and added: “Will you share the conclusions of whatever investigation you are undertaking?”
Truss said she is “very disturbing” her name made it into the Civil Service document, and “impugned my name without evidence”.
She continued: “That not a single person who drafted, edited, proofed or signed off so significant a document saw fit to challenge the slurs against me would only go to suggest that there is a settled view in Whitehall which accepts the narrative of my political opponents without challenge.
“This should be a matter of deep concern to the British public.”
All mentions of Truss in the briefing notes appear to have been pulled after she complained yesterday.
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The online documents previously said Labour were planning on rolling out a Budget Responsibility Bill which would “ensure that the mistakes of Liz Truss min-Budget cannot repeated” with a “fiscal lock”.
Another reference said: “The fiscal lock is intended to capture and prevent those announcements that could resemble the disastrous mini-Budget.”
The final one said: “The Institute for Government have said that ’Rachel Reeves has made welcome moves to improve fiscal policy making – Liz Truss’s autumn mini-Budget is a lesson in how not to do fiscal policy.”
Truss lost her seat in the general election as part of the humiliating Tory defeat.
Rishi Sunak joked “life comes at you fast” almost two weeks after he lost his job as prime minister on Wednesday.
Now the leader of the Opposition, Sunak seems to have moved away from the tetchy reputation he had and is even poking fun at himself.
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In just his second speech from the despatch box on the other side of the Commons today, Sunak said: “If I may offer some words of advice to the members opposite.
“On the government benches, life comes at you fast.”
Alluding to his rapid rise to the top, Sunak – who only became an MP in 2015 – said: “Soon you might be fortunate enough to be tapped on the shoulder and offered a junior ministerial role.
“Then you’ll find yourself attending cabinet. Then, in the cabinet.
“And then, when the prime minister’s position becomes untenable” – cue a wave of laughter around the chamber as he referred to Liz Truss’ dramatic fall from grace – “you might end up being called to the highest office”.
“And before you know it, you have a bright future behind you,” Sunak paused to laugh with his fellow MPs again before adding: “And you’re left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44.”
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There was more giggling at that, before Sunak – still smiling – said it was right to congratulate Starmer on his “decisive victory” in the election.
“He deserves the good will of all of us in this House as he takes on the most demanding of jobs in the increasingly uncertain world in which we all live,” Sunak said.
Rishi Sunak offers words of wisdom to the ministers on the government benches.
He jokes that \"before you know it, you have a bright future behind you and you are left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44\".
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Rishi Sunak offers words of wisdom to the ministers on the government benches.
He jokes that “before you know it, you have a bright future behind you and you are left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44”.
Sunak seemed equally jovial earlier in the day when he walked alongside Starmer for the State Opening of Parliament, chatting away.
The prime minister then appeared to return the favour, beginning his speech by acknowledging Sunak’s behaviour.
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He said: “In every exchange since the election, he has gone well beyond the usual standards of generosity and I thank him for that.”
But, Starmer could not help reminding Sunak of his legacy from Downing Street.
He said: “While I respect the tone of the leader of the opposition Rishi Sunak’s contribution, I can’t stop my mind wandering to nine months ago when he was at this dispatch box.”
He described the Conservatives as a party “content to let our countries’ problems fester”.
But on LBC this morning, Burns said “I don’t think we ever recovered from the Truss debacle. [Rishi Sunak] rang me, as I think he rang most former MPs, to apologise.
“I said to him ‘what are you apologising for? You were dealt a hospital pass here’.
“Truss’ inability to shut up dogged us. I did something like 35 house meetings during the campaign. In every single one of those, she came up.
“The body blow to economic credibility, to the perception of us being competent, was dealt a body blow by Liz Truss. The biggest gift to whoever leads the Conservative Party in the years ahead is that she is no longer in parliament.
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“The electorate began the Conservative recovery in a very real way by ejecting her in Norfolk last week.”
Asked about Truss’ comments in the Sunday Telegraph, the former Bournemouth West MP said: “I think it’s delusional and it’s time to call it out for what it is. I don’t think she’s actually well and I think those who are close to her are letting her down by not telling her the truth. She is preposterous. She is toxic. She needs to be quiet.
“This lunatic lie that it was the conspiracies, it was the deep state, it was the Treasury, it was the Office for Budget Responsibility, it was gnomes at the bottom of the garden. It was incompetence and Liz Truss was the longest, continuous serving minister since 2010, and her record across a whole range of things was pretty mediocre.
“She made a lot of fuss recently about the gender debate and conversion therapy and so on. She did bugger all about that when she was equalities minister.
“She is now irrelevant and should be treated by the Conservative Party as such. Her record was the millstone around our neck.”
The former prime minister spent last weekend phoning round the 175 former Tory MPs who lost their seats at the election.
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“He felt it was the right thing to do,” one Sunak ally told HuffPost UK. “He feels a personal responsibility for all those who lost their seats.
“They committed their lives to public service and he wants to make sure they are supported in this difficult moment.”
Sunak made clear his remorse for his party’s worst ever election result when he made his first Commons appearance as leader of the opposition on Tuesday.
“For those of us in my party, let me begin with a message for those who are no longer sitting behind me: I am sorry,” he said.
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“We have lost too many diligent, community-spirited representatives whose wisdom and expertise will be missed in the debates and the discussions ahead.”
But the former PM’s warm words have cut little ice with many in the party, who blame him for the disaster which befell them on July 4 as Keir Starmer’s Labour Party secured a 174-seat landslide majority.
Some of his most trenchant critics attended the Popular Conservatism conference in Westminster earlier this week, where the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Suella Braverman set out their prognosis of where it all went wrong for their party.
“It was a terrible result,” former Tory MEP David Campbell-Bannerman, told those present. “I call it a ‘Conservative Chernobyl’, a kind of meltdown for the Conservatives.”
Criticism of the former PM is not just confined to those on the Tory right, however.
One former cabinet minister on the party’s moderate wing said Sunak’s decision to call a summer election was a mistake.
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“The best time to have it would have been to coincide with the local elections in May,” the MP said. “Tying it in with that campaign would have given us a better chance of saving more MPs and councillors. Calling it when he did made no sense.”
The improving economic picture, confirmed by higher than expected growth figures on Thursday, has led some Conservatives to conclude that Sunak would have been better to wait until the end of the year to go to the country, thereby giving voters more time to feel the benefit in their pockets.
That was disputed by one Sunak adviser, who said the calculation inside No.10 was that, to paraphrase D:Ream’s New Labour anthem, things could only get worse the longer he hung on.
“All the data we were seeing showed that hundreds of thousands of people were coming off their fixed rate mortgages every month and suddenly seeing their bills go up by hundreds of pounds because interest rates are much higher than they were,” they told HuffPost UK.
“Even if the Bank of England knocked half a per cent off the base rate, it would have made no difference to them. The longer we waited, more people were becoming poorer and inevitably blaming the government. That’s why he decided to go for July.”
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The Tory Party is now in a state of limbo until a new leader is found, but that may not be until the end of the year as the party picks over the bones of what happened last week.
Sunak has said he will stay on until the mechanism for choosing his successor is decided, which suggests that an interim leader may have to be appointed to mind the shop until a permanent one is elected.
However, some believe Sunak owes it to his party to hang around until his replacement is known.
“After leading us to our worst defeat ever, the least he can day is stay on as leader for a few more months to help steady the ship,” said one MP.
“All he would really need to do is ask six questions a week at PMQs. Surely that’s not too much to ask.”
Sunak faced his remaining MPs at a meeting of the party’s 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers on Wednesday, urging them to unite to ensure they hold the new Labour government to account.
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It was, by all accounts, a relatively harmonious affair, with none of those present taking the opportunity to criticise the former PM to his face for the disastrous election campaign he ran.
Outside the room, however, party grandee Sir Edward Leigh – newly installed as the Father of the House of Commons as its longest-serving male MP – was clear about the direction he believed the party should be heading in.
“We have to be a proper Conservative Party,” he said. “We have to stand for something, otherwise we’re going nowhere. Because all these people who voted for Reform will simply go on voting Reform.
“If the right-wing vote is divided, we will never win again. These people are not going to go away. We need to bring back the people who voted Reform, who want a proper Conservative Party.
“We need to have a proper leadership election now, and whoever becomes leader must articulate this point of view. Unless we bring back those Reform people we are doomed to failure.”
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But another Tory MP told HuffPost UK that the party’s problems could not simply be solved by a leap to the right.
“If you look at those who voted Reform, about half of them can never be won over because they’re the ones who used to vote Ukip and the Brexit Party,” he said. “We can never be right-wing enough for them.
“But the rest are traditional Tory voters who just wanted to give us a kicking this time around and are in play next time. We can get them back by being a competent, sensible Conservative Party – not by veering off to the right.”
The fallout from the Chernobyl disaster lasted for decades. The result of the fight for the soul of the Tory Party will determine how long it is before they are ready to govern again.
The former prime minister spent last weekend phoning round the 175 former Tory MPs who lost their seats at the election.
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“He felt it was the right thing to do,” one Sunak ally told HuffPost UK. “He feels a personal responsibility for all those who lost their seats.
“They committed their lives to public service and he wants to make sure they are supported in this difficult moment.”
Sunak made clear his remorse for his party’s worst ever election result when he made his first Commons appearance as leader of the opposition on Tuesday.
“For those of us in my party, let me begin with a message for those who are no longer sitting behind me: I am sorry,” he said.
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“We have lost too many diligent, community-spirited representatives whose wisdom and expertise will be missed in the debates and the discussions ahead.”
But the former PM’s warm words have cut little ice with many in the party, who blame him for the disaster which befell them on July 4 as Keir Starmer’s Labour Party secured a 174-seat landslide majority.
Some of his most trenchant critics attended the Popular Conservatism conference in Westminster earlier this week, where the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Suella Braverman set out their prognosis of where it all went wrong for their party.
“It was a terrible result,” former Tory MEP David Campbell-Bannerman, told those present. “I call it a ‘Conservative Chernobyl’, a kind of meltdown for the Conservatives.”
Criticism of the former PM is not just confined to those on the Tory right, however.
One former cabinet minister on the party’s moderate wing said Sunak’s decision to call a summer election was a mistake.
Advertisement
“The best time to have it would have been to coincide with the local elections in May,” the MP said. “Tying it in with that campaign would have given us a better chance of saving more MPs and councillors. Calling it when he did made no sense.”
The improving economic picture, confirmed by higher than expected growth figures on Thursday, has led some Conservatives to conclude that Sunak would have been better to wait until the end of the year to go to the country, thereby giving voters more time to feel the benefit in their pockets.
That was disputed by one Sunak adviser, who said the calculation inside No.10 was that, to paraphrase D:Ream’s New Labour anthem, things could only get worse the longer he hung on.
“All the data we were seeing showed that hundreds of thousands of people were coming off their fixed rate mortgages every month and suddenly seeing their bills go up by hundreds of pounds because interest rates are much higher than they were,” they told HuffPost UK.
“Even if the Bank of England knocked half a per cent off the base rate, it would have made no difference to them. The longer we waited, more people were becoming poorer and inevitably blaming the government. That’s why he decided to go for July.”
Advertisement
The Tory Party is now in a state of limbo until a new leader is found, but that may not be until the end of the year as the party picks over the bones of what happened last week.
Sunak has said he will stay on until the mechanism for choosing his successor is decided, which suggests that an interim leader may have to be appointed to mind the shop until a permanent one is elected.
However, some believe Sunak owes it to his party to hang around until his replacement is known.
“After leading us to our worst defeat ever, the least he can day is stay on as leader for a few more months to help steady the ship,” said one MP.
“All he would really need to do is ask six questions a week at PMQs. Surely that’s not too much to ask.”
Sunak faced his remaining MPs at a meeting of the party’s 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers on Wednesday, urging them to unite to ensure they hold the new Labour government to account.
Advertisement
It was, by all accounts, a relatively harmonious affair, with none of those present taking the opportunity to criticise the former PM to his face for the disastrous election campaign he ran.
Outside the room, however, party grandee Sir Edward Leigh – newly installed as the Father of the House of Commons as its longest-serving male MP – was clear about the direction he believed the party should be heading in.
“We have to be a proper Conservative Party,” he said. “We have to stand for something, otherwise we’re going nowhere. Because all these people who voted for Reform will simply go on voting Reform.
“If the right-wing vote is divided, we will never win again. These people are not going to go away. We need to bring back the people who voted Reform, who want a proper Conservative Party.
“We need to have a proper leadership election now, and whoever becomes leader must articulate this point of view. Unless we bring back those Reform people we are doomed to failure.”
Advertisement
But another Tory MP told HuffPost UK that the party’s problems could not simply be solved by a leap to the right.
“If you look at those who voted Reform, about half of them can never be won over because they’re the ones who used to vote Ukip and the Brexit Party,” he said. “We can never be right-wing enough for them.
“But the rest are traditional Tory voters who just wanted to give us a kicking this time around and are in play next time. We can get them back by being a competent, sensible Conservative Party – not by veering off to the right.”
The fallout from the Chernobyl disaster lasted for decades. The result of the fight for the soul of the Tory Party will determine how long it is before they are ready to govern again.
Rishi Sunak has apologised to the hundreds of former Tory MPs who lost their seats in last week’s Labour landslide.
The former prime minister said “I am sorry” as he addressed the Commons for the first time as leader of the opposition.
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Parliament returned just four days after Labour won a 174-seat majority as the Conservatives lost two-thirds of their MPs.
Keir Starmer, in his first Commons speech as prime minister, had earlier said it was time to “replace the politics of performance with a politics of service”.
Flanked by the 120 fellow Tory MPs who survived last week’s electoral massacre, Sunak said: “For those of us in my party, let me begin with a message for those who are no longer sitting behind me: I am sorry.
“We have lost too many diligent, community-spirited representatives whose wisdom and expertise will be missed in the debates the discussions ahead.
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“It is important after 14 years in government that the Conservative Party rebuilds. So now we will take up the crucial role of His Majesty’s official opposition professionally, effectively and humbly.
“And restoring trust begins my remembering that being here is an opportunity to do what those we serve expect of us, and in our case that means holding the new government to account.”
For the first time in 14 years, Labour’s MPs are sitting on the government benches, even though there is not enough room for all 411 of them.
Speaking after Lindsay Hoyle was re-elected as Commons Speaker, Starmer said: “The need to restore trust should weigh heavily on every member here, new and returning alike. We all have a duty to show that politics can be a force for good.
“So whatever our political difference, it is now time to turn the page, unite in a common endeavour of national renewal, and make this new parliament a parliament of service.”
On BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the former health secretary – who is widely expected to put herself forward as a contender to be the next Tory leader – said the Conservatives needs to “act on those values” in the party which voters support.
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Alluding to the meagre 121 seats the Tories took in the election, Kuenssberg asked Atkins: “What went wrong with your values then?”
Atkins replied: “We know that the country, actually, is instinctively Conservative, if you look, people want lower taxes.”
“Do you think the country is still instinctively Conservative when they booted you out? You’ve got your worst defeat ever.” The BBC host hit back.
Atkins said: “In terms of their values, their instincts, they are, I believe, still instinctively Conservative.
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“They want lower taxes, they want to build a better future for their children, they want to help them thrive in their personal lives, and in their livelihoods.”
“Those values are important to us all,” she added.
It’s worth noting that Conservatives took just 24% of the vote share overall on Thursday.
So Kuenssberg pushed: “What was it that went wrong, though?
“The country has dramatically kicked you out.
“This was not the standard defeat. Labour won a landslide. What was it that was wrong?”
Atkins said it was about “trust” with voters, but refused to outline what the party will actually do next, saying that the parliamentary party has not reconvened since the abysmal general election.
The Sun newspaper has officially endorsed the Labour Party just one day before the public head to the polls in a major victory for Keir Starmer.
The best-selling tabloid, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, announced “it’s time for a change” in an editorial published online.
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This afternoon, the newspaper shared an early version of Thursday’s front page, complete with the headline: “As Britain goes to the polls, it’s time for a new manager (and we don’t mean Southgate).”
The paper has a track record of backing election winners.
It famously claimed to have swayed 10 million readers to vote for Tory John Major in 1992, leading to its well-known headline: “It was the Sun wot won it.”
It later supported Labour shortly before Tony Blair took the party into three election victories, only to move away from the party in 2009.
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It stayed loyal to the Conservatives over the next 15 years – which is why today’s switch is a major win for Starmer.
The editorial admitted that PM Rishi Sunak “has many policies which we can support” such as the Rwanda deportation plan, and the pledge to drop National Insurance contributions for workers.
It also praised the “ban on teaching harmful gender ideology in schools”, “putting the brakes on the headlong rush towards Net Zero” and Sunak’s commitment to “our Brexit freedoms”.
However, the pro-Brexit newspaper said the party has become “a divided rabble, more interested in fighting themselves than running the country”.
The Sun said the party needs to be in Opposition to unite “around a common set of principles”.
It also stopped short of endorsing Nigel Farage’s populist party Reform, saying those his manifesto “has struck a chord with millions” it is “a one-man band” – and swiftly described the Liberal Democrats as “a joke”.
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The editorial seems to come around to Labour through a process of elimination, saying while it was “still a work in progress” and there are “plenty of concerns” remaining, Starmer has pulled his “party back to the centre ground of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in No.10”.
The endorsement comes as all signs point to a landslide victory for Labour.
