Nadine Dorries has suggested in another interview this morning that Rishi Sunak was part of a “coup” that brought down Boris Johnson, my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports.
Boris Johnson wants his supporters to abandon their campaign to get Conservative HQ to give party members a vote on whether he should be allowed to stay on as leader.
It is claimed that more than 10,000 members have signed a petition saying. members should get a vote on whether or not Johnson has resigned. But so far the party has not taken any notice, and CCHQ believes some of the people who have signed are not genuine members anyway.
In an interview with the Today programme Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, who is close to Johnson, said she had recently discussed this with the prime minister. Johnson told her, “Tell them to stop, it’s not right,” she said. Dorries went on: “They were his words, his exact words.”
She also claimed that a report in the Daily Mirror suggesting that she might vacate her Mid Bedfordshire seat, where she has a majority of almost 25,000, to make way for Johnson was “100% nuclear grade tosh”.
The Mirror says that the idea had been discussed because Johnson wants to stay in the Commons, and hopes that he may get a chance to lead the Tories again, but feels he needs a safe seat. Currently he represents Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where he had a majority of 7,210 at the last election but where a big swing to Labour could see him lose.
In her Mirror story Pippa Crerar writes:
Mr Johnson’s personal appeal with Tory voters in his West London seat, a popular local Conservative council and strong grassroots campaigners should, in theory, make ousting the top Tory a difficult task.
However, modelling earlier this month from Britain Elects predicted that Labour could get 43.7% of the vote in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, an increase of 6.1% on 2019, if there was an election held today. Mr Johnson’s vote share would drop by 11.5%, giving him just 41.1% of the vote.
Labour and Lib Dem voters have shown themselves willing to vote tactically in recent by-elections while constituency boundary changes would add Northolt, regarded as a Labour area, to the seat.
Young professional graduates who are more likely to vote against the Tories have been moving in droves out of central London to suburbs like Hillingdon.
Good morning. Tonight Liz Truss will debate Rishi Sunak at the first of the official hustings being organised by the Conservative party for members. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary and Truss supporter, has been on the broadcast round this morning and, despite reportedly being told by Truss’s team to tone down her comments about Sunak, she has found it hard to resist, and her interviews have included various studs up attacks on the former chancellor. On LBC she accused him of “mansplaining” in the BBC debate on Monday, and said it was a “terrrible look”. And on BBC Breadkfast she defended her decision to have a go at him over his expensive clothes, saying “it’s about judgment, and it’s about who voters can relate to”.
But the Labour party is going through a bout of internal fighting too, triggered by Keir Starmer’s decision last night to sack Sam Tarry as shadow transport minister after he joined an RMT picket line (defying orders from Starmer) and then proceeded to give a series of interviews that had not been authorised by the leadership and in which he flatly contradicted party policy on public sector pay (the real reason why he was sacked, Labour says). My colleague Jessica Elgot has all the details here.
As Jess reports, union leaders have criticised Starmer’s move, arguing that it shows Labour is not committed to standing up for working people. This morning leftwingers in the parliamentary party have also accused Starmer of double standards, saying that Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, also gave an interview this week in which she departed form party policy, but that she was not sacked. Reeves said Labour was opposed to rail renationalisation, but later the party said that remained its policy.
John McDonnell, shadow chancellor when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, told Sky News:
Rachel Reeves went on an interview and made up policy on rail nationalisation which had to be contradicted by the shadow spokesperson on transport within hours. I didn’t see Rachel Reeves being sacked.
Diane Abbott, shadow home secretary under Corbyn, made the same argument in an interview on the Today programme.
McDonnell also told Sky News that Starmer had generated a “completely unnecessary row”. He said:
Just at a time when the Tories are tearing themselves apart, and we’ve got the maximum opportunity, I think, to gain an advantage in the polls that will build the support to take us into a government, we’re having this completely unnecessary row.
Sam went on the picket lines like shadow minister after shadow minister over the years in support of workers who are asking for a decent pay rise. It’s a just cause …
The Tory leadership election is demonstrating how the Tories are ripping themselves apart. This is the time where we should have maximum unity and maximum solidarity for the support for workers who are desperate to have a decent pay rise because they’ve been impacted upon so badly by this cost of living crisis.
The Tory hustings does not start until 7pm this evening. There is not a lot in the diary until then, although Starmer is on a visit in Birmingham, and Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, is doing a phone-in on LBC at 10am.
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