A Tory leadership candidate has revealed the bizarre middle name he gave his daughter as a tribute to a former prime minister.
Robert Jenrick admitted the youngster’s middle name is Thatcher because she was born in 2013, the same year her famous namesake died.
“I thought it was a good way of reminding her of a great prime minister,” he told a question and answer session at the Tory conference in Birmingham.
Margaret Thatcher was prime minister between 1979 and 1990, winning three general elections along the way.
Jenrick is currently the bookies’ favourite to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party leader.
However, he has been at the centre of a major row after claiming in a campaign video that the SAS kill terrorists rather than capturing them because they could be released by the European Court of Human Rights.
He has been condemned by his leadership rivals James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, both of whom served in the Army before entering politics.
Appearing on stage after Jenrick this afternoon, Cleverly said: “I’ve never accused the British armed forces of murdering anybody…anyone who makes that assertion better back it up.”
Jo Coburn: Are you pleased to see & hear from Liz Truss?
Justine Greening(former Tory MP): “Frankly, it’s astonishing that she’s even here… I’m staggered by the fact that there are any people in the party that still take Liz Truss seriously.”#PoliticsLive#CPC24pic.twitter.com/fx2Kjf8XFq
A former Tory minister tore Liz Truss apart on live TV earlier today with such brutality that even the BBC presenter looked surprised.
Justine Greening, who was education secretary under Theresa may, said she was “staggered by the fact that there are still any people in the party who still take Liz Truss seriously”.
She told a packed room that the Tories would have secured more votes at the general election had she remained in power, and – despite no longer being an MP – claimed parliament has become a “shadow of its former self”.
Discussing the ex-PM’s appearance, the host of BBC Politics Live, Jo Coburn, turned to Greening and asked: “Justine, pleased to see and hear from Liz Truss?”
“Well, I think she can call us when the shuttle lands,” Greening immediately replied.
She continued: “I mean, frankly, it’s astonishing she’s even here after a disastrous Budget that torpedoed any slim, remaining hope that the Conservative Party had at of winning the forthcoming election.
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“You know, I am staggered by the fact that there are still any people in the party who still take Liz Truss seriously.”
While Greening was talking, the camera panned to Coburn, who looked shocked at the strength of the former MP’s outburst.
Greening was the MP for Putney between 2005 and 2019, and served alongside Truss in May and David Cameron’s governments.
However, Greening lost the Tory whip after blocking Boris Johnson’s no deal Brexit plan in October 2019.
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But, she failed to rule out a return to parliament during her conference appearance today, saying: “I’m currently thinking about what to do.
“What is certainly true is I’m not going to give up on this fight. I think the fight of our lifetime, saving Western civilisation, and that is what I am focusing on.”
Kemi Badenoch has insisted she does not think statutory maternity pay is “excessive” as a row over her views overshadowed the first day of the Tories’ annual conference.
The leadership contender had appeared to suggest that the amount of money given to new mothers was too much in an interview on Sunday morning.
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She later said she had been “misrepresented” as she was forced to clarify her stance.
Speaking to Times Radio’s Kate McCann, Badenoch said: “Tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This in my view is excessive.”
Asked by McCann is she believed maternity pay was excessive, Badenoch replied: “I think it’s gone too far the other way in terms of general business regulation.”
Badenoch’s leadership rivals, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick, all distanced themselves from her remarks.
The former women and equalities later posted on X: “Contrary to what some have said, I clearly said the burden of regulation on businesses had gone too far… of course I believe in maternity pay! Watch the clip for the truth.”
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In a further post, with an accompanying video, she said: “Of course maternity pay isn’t excessive…no mother of 3 kids thinks that.
“But we must talk about the burden of excessive business regulation otherwise we might as well be the Labour Party. My campaign is different from others because tell hard truths. It is how we will renew our party, our thinking and our politics.”
Great day at conference and enjoyed some robust media conversations. I don’t shy from difficult topics, but I won’t be misrepresented. Of course culture matters but we need to talk about integration.
Of course maternity pay isn’t excessive…no mother of 3 kids thinks that.
Badenoch also clashed with Laura Kuenssberg over an article she wrote for the Sunday Telegraph in which she said some immigrants to the UK “hate Israel”.
Asked to explain who she “specifically” meant, Badenoch replied: “I know what you’re trying to do, Laura. You want me to say Muslims when it isn’t all Muslims, so I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to play this game.
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“I should be able to say that I have made an observation without you trying to portray it as me attacking a particular group.”
The party’s annual gathering usually has those at the top leading the whole event, but the former PM – who is still leader until November – has taken the almost unprecedented step of not speaking from the main stage at all this year.
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Allowing the spotlight to fall on the four remaining contenders vying to replace him, Sunak just made a 15-minute “thank you” speech to party members away from the main hall.
Speaking to a room – which was not exactly packed to the brim – Sunak was quick to apologise for leading the party into its worst set of election results ever.
He said: “I am only sorry that your efforts could not deliver the results you deserved.”
But one person in the crowd heckled him, saying: “It wasn’t you!”
He received further support when he confirmed that this would be his last speech to conference as the Tory Party leader, as another mysterious attendee shouted, “We love you, Rishi!”
He did not respond.
The former PM also wasted no time in criticising Labour, whom he claimed were trying to “rewrite history”.
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New PM Keir Starmer has blamed his more unpopular decisions – like restricting the winter fuel payments to those on pension credit – on the £22bn black hole Labour claim the Tories left behind in the government finances.
Sunak said conference this year was clearly such a “hot ticket” that he was surprised the prime minister “hasn’t asked someone to buy it for him”.
He added: “Socialists always run out of other people’s money, something Lord Alli is finding out as we speak.”
Lord Alli is a Labour donor who has been in the spotlight this month over the amount of freebies Starmer has declared since 2019.
Sunak concluded his speech by saying: “I do want to finish with a final ask of all of you.
“Whoever wins this contest, give them your backing.”
He continued: “We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling. We must not nurse old grudges but build new friendships.
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“We must always remember what unites us rather than obsess over where we might differ, because when we turn in on ourselves we lose and the country ends up with a Labour government.”
Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has suggested that statutory maternity pay is “excessive”.
According to the government website, new mothers are legally entitled to 90% of their average earnings for six weeks, followed by a maximum of £184.03 a week for the next 33 weeks.
But appearing on Times Radio this morning, Badenoch – a former women and equalities minister – said the exact amount was “neither here nor there”.
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She said she was in favour of parents taking “more personal responsibility” rather than burdening businesses with more regulation.
The MP said: “Maternity pay varies depending on who you work for, but it is a function, where it’s statutory maternity pay. It is a function of tax.
“Tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This in my view is excessive.”
Asked by presenter Kate McCann is she believed maternity pay was excessive, Badenoch replied: “I think it’s gone too far the other way in terms of general business regulation.
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“We need to allow businesses, especially small businesses, to make more of their own decisions. The exact amount of maternity pay in my view is neither here nor there. We need to make sure that we are creating an environment where people can work and people can have more freedom to make their individual decisions.”
But McCann hit back: “Well it’s here nor there for people who can’t afford to have a baby, isn’t it?”
Badenoch replied: “We need tohave more personal responsibility. There was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies.”
McCann then told her: “Well that’s because women often had to not work. They had to stay at home. So is that the solution?”
The former cabinet minister then accused the interviewer of “putting words in my mouth”.
She added: “The point I’m making, Kate, is that we have got to a point where government isn’t working anymore and it’s tinkering everywhere. Me giving you an exact amount of what maternity pay should be when circumstances are different everywhere is not where we’re starting from.”
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Her comments soon sparked criticism from her leadership rivals.
Robert Jenrick said the Conservatives should be “firmly on the side of parents”, adding: “Nobody says it is easy having kids, why would we want to make it harder?”
Tom Tugendhat claimed he had not seen the context of her comment but that it is “important that women have the ability to choose how to live their lives”.
James Cleverly said: “When it comes to working mothers the cost of childcare is too expensive.
“It was government meddling that made it expensive.
“Let’s make childcare cheaper so that mums who want to can go back to work and can afford to do so.”
Badenoch later responded to the backlash, writing on X: “Contrary to what some have said, I clearly said the burden of regulation on businesses had gone too far… of course I believe in maternity pay! Watch the clip for the truth.”
The Canterbury MP announced her shock decision in an interview with the Sunday Times.
Duffield, a former Labour whip who was first elected as an MP in 2017, identified the decision to axe winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, as well as keeping the two-child benefit cap, as the main reasons for her move.
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In her resignation letter to the PM, she said: “Although many ‘last straws’ have led to my decision, my reason for leaving now is the programme of policies you seem determined to stick to, however unpopular they are with the electorate and your own MPs.
“You repeat often that you will make the ‘tough decisions’ and that the country is ‘all in this together’. But those decisions do not directly affect any one of us in parliament.
“They are cruel and unnecessary, and affects hundreds of thousands of our poorest, most vulnerable constituents. This is not what I was elected to do. It is not even wise politics, and it certainly is not ‘the politics of service’.”
Duffield also condemned the “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice” which has seen the PM, his wife and other senior Labour figures accept clothes, concert tickets and other hospitality from supporters.
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“The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale, she said.
“I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party.”
Duffield, who has clashed with Starmer in the past over the issue of trans rights, has grown increasingly critical of the prime minister in recent weeks.
In a direct attack on the PM, she wrote: “As prime minister, your managerial style and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long 14 years to be mandated by the British public to return to power.
“Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear.
“How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate’s sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?”
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Duffield added: “The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few.
“Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed. I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.”
Well, he wasn’t trying to control the crowd as much as he was trying to control any messaging about people leaving the event early.
Rally size is something that is important to Trump — so important that he became agitated during a presidential debate on September 10 when Democratic rival Kamala Harris bluntly said that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
In Walker, Trump attempted to explain why rallygoers seemed to be leaving his event.
“The people that you see leaving? Because nobody ever leaves,” the former president said. “And when they do, I finish up quick.”
Trump then suggested that his staffers were to blame for the apparent departures, and claimed that people were actually lining up in the back for photos since he couldn’t pose for pictures earlier.
“These stupid people that are with me sometimes, they say, ‘Come on back,’” Trump said. “Thirty people, they get up and they go back. And they’re all lined up in the back waiting for me to take a picture because I couldn’t do it before.”
But Trump’s explanation for people leaving his rally wasn’t helped by the Harris campaign sharing purported video of (checks notes) people leaving his rally.
Not surprisingly, social media users soon mocked the former president for his questionable claim.
Maybe the Conservatives don’t really need a new leader, after all.
Remarkably, the party has actually gained seven local council seats in the past five weeks after suffering a landslide general election defeat less than three months ago.
That is despite the fact that, for all intents and purposes, the Tories are effectively leaderless at the moment.
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Rishi Sunak is still nominally in charge. But even those close to him concede that he mentally checked out of the job on the morning of July 5.
Indeed, the former PM will hardly be seen at the Conservatives’ annual conference in Birmingham, which kicks off on Sunday. He will address a members-only reception that evening, and is expected to play no further part in the proceedings.
The Conservatives’ poll ratings have recently ticked up slightly, although this has more to do with the Labour government’s ongoing woes than a sudden wave of affection for the Tories.
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Polling by Savanta, seen by HuffPost UK, confirms that the general public have stopped paying attention to the party.
Given a choice of who would make the best opposition leader, Sunak, Nigel Farage or Ed Davey, the most popular answer was “don’t know”.
Emma Levin, associate director at Savanta, said: “There is clearly a big gap in British politics for an opposition politician to properly take Keir Starmer to task. But that hasn’t happened yet.”
One former Tory cabinet member, who is yet to decide who to back in the leadership race, told HuffPost UK that the conference is an opportunity to show the public that the party still exists.
“Labour being so shit has just overwhelmed everything,” he said. “I’m genuinely surprised that they’re making a lot of very basic mistakes.
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“People have forgotten all about Rishi Sunak. It has all been about Labour and how bad they’ve been.”
The MP said he hoped that one of the four remaining candidates may emulate David Cameron, who used the party conference in 2005 to destroy his more-favoured rival, David Davis.
“This year’s conference is about bringing the leadership contest back to centre stage, and highlighting what the differences are between the contenders.
“We’ll be looking to see how they perform, whether they commit any gaffes and whether any of them can do a Cameron-esque performance that blows everyone else away.”
Under the rules of the contest, the remaining four will be whittled down to three and then two by a couple of ballots of Tory MPs when Westminster returns the week after next. It will then be up to the party’s members to decide the winner, who will be announced on November 2.
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The contenders: clockwise from top left, Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly
Former immigration minister Jenrick is now the bookies’ favourite, overtaking the previous frontrunner Badenoch.
One of his supporters said: “There is a lot of momentum behind Robert’s campaign, but he’s not taking anything for granted, he’s going to keep working hard to persuade MPs to support his positive case for change.
“He’s the only candidate who can win back voters on the left and right with his focus on the big issues and his serious, credible answers on the key challenges of the day, such as immigration, NHS reform and growing our economy.”
But a Badenoch campaign source insisted she was very much still in the race.
He said: “Kemi has been touring the country solidly for the past few months, going from Conservative association to Conservative association and getting an amazing reception from the members.
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“All the independent polling puts her way out ahead with our membership. This conference is a chance to show MPs she is the members’ choice – the one with the star quality to cut through as a leader of the opposition and take the fight to Labour.”
Cleverly, a former party chairman, foreign secretary and home secretary, is seen by many as the dark horse of the contest, with even a senior figure in a rival campaign admitting he is “under-priced” by the bookies.
A source on his campaign described the conference as “a home fixture”, given his popularity with the party’s rank-and-file.
“He is a party man who loves campaigning and engaging with the activists and members – and he gets a consistently good reception from them wherever he goes, mainly because he knows half of them,” the source said.
“His approach is to engage as much as possible with the members, to set out his pitch as the unity candidate and the most experienced candidate who is ready to hit the ground running from day one as leader.”
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It is barely 12 weeks since the Tories were reduced to just 121 MPs in the House of Commons, a statistical irrelevance when compared to Labour’s 411 and fewer than 50 seats ahead of the Lib Dems.
Whoever wins the leadership race faces a monumental task in trying to return the party to power at the next election.
Nevertheless, there remains a flicker of optimism among the party that the new Labour government’s struggles are not just a blip, but a sign that their seemingly-impregnable Commons majority could be wiped out at the first attempt.
They believe there is some light at the end of a very long tunnel. Whether it turns out to be an oncoming train remains to be seen.
A former Tory chair has quit the party because it has become so “far right”.
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi said she had decided to give up the Conservative whip in the House of Lords “with a heavy heart”.
In a post on X, she said: “This is a sad day for me. I am a Conservative and remain so but sadly the current party are far removed from the party I joined and served in cabinet.
“My decision is a reflection of how far right my party has moved and the hypocrisy and double standards in its treatment of different communities. A timely reminder of the issues that I raise in my book Muslims Don’t Matter.”
Baroness Warsi was made a life peer in 2007 and was Tory chair alongside Lord Feldman between 2010 and 2012.
A close ally of David Cameron, she also served as minister without portfolio, minister for faith and communities and a Foreign Office minister during her time in government.
However, in recent years she has been a consistent critic of her party, especially its treatment of Muslims.
“I will hold my hand up and say, I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk.
“I look at Twitter before he took over and after: there is a lot more free speech.
“Yes, there are many, many more things that I see on X, as he calls it, that I don’t like.
“But I also know that views are not suppressed the way that they were, that there was a cultural establishment – that was very left – that controlled quite a lot of discourse on that platform.”
Musk has turned X (formerly Twitter) upside down since his takeover almost two years ago.
More recently, he has repeated baseless conspiracy theories that there is a “two-tier” policing system in the UK, suggesting the far-right rioters seen in August ended up with a harsher punishment compared to previous pro-Palestine demonstrators.
Badenoch, who is currently competing against frontrunner Robert Jenrick,James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat for the title of Tory leader, was the only leadership hopeful to announce support for Musk in her interview with the Spectator.
Jenrick said he was “not going to be booking a tête-à-tête with Elon Musk any time soon”, while Cleverly said you have to be “very, very careful about curtailing voices that you disagree with”.
Tugendhat appeared to question how Musk has handled X, saying: “If you are running a platform that is entirely dominated by anonymous bots, is that freedom of speech – or just propaganda?
“If you are allowed to say whatever you like but you put your name to it, that’s freedom of speech. And it should be defended, absolutely.”
