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| Conservative leadership: Tory MPs start voting for new leader - live news | Conservative leadership: Tory MPs start voting for new leader - live news |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| MPs have to go in one door, and they exit another. Journalists aren’t allowed to film in this corridor and there is a policeman at the exit of committee room 14 (aka the Gladstone room). Most of the MPs voting are heading off quickly without hanging around to chat. | |
| Zac Goldsmith and Jo Johnson have arrived together. | |
| Some of the MPs were sent out to form a queue. We saw Leadsom re-emerge, but she is back in now, with Amber Rudd going in behind here. David Davis followed her in. | |
| The door has just been opened. | |
| Steve Brine led a largish group of Tory MPs through the door. Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom are the only candidates here and they’ve gone in. Steve Baker, the Tory Brexiter who at one stage was contemplating his own bid, is here too. | |
| I’ve left my office in the Commons press galley and I’m now on a bench in the committee corridor, outside committee room 14, where MPs will he voting. | |
| There are about a dozen Conservative MPs on the benches outside one of the doors to committee room 14 waiting to be allowed in to vote. Steve Brine seems to be first in the queue, followed by Sir Desmond Swayne. Other MPs here include Charlie Elphicke, Peter Bone, David Tredinnick. | |
| The ConservativeHome website regularly conducts surveys of Conservative party members as to who they want to see as their next leader. In the past they have turned out to be reasonably good indicators as to what ends up happening in internal Conservative party elections. | |
| It has published one today and it shows Boris Johnson apparently pulling ahead. More than half of members surveyed said they wanted him as leader. | |
| But the real surprise is Rory Stewart who has come from almost nowhere and is now in second place. | |
| Here is the chart. | |
| And here is an excerpt from the write-up by Paul Goodman, the ConservativeHome editor. | |
| Boris Johnson’s most recent scores in our Next Tory Leader surveys have been 33 per cent, 43 per cent – and now 54 per cent. That 43 per cent score was already a record for the survey in this question, as far as we can tell, and Johnson’s eve-of-poll rating sees him taking more than half the vote. | |
| Rory Stewart’s brilliant campaign has taken him to second, but he is more than 40 points behind the front-runner. Dominic Raab, who was on 15 per cent at the end of May, has seen his rating almost halve since then. Johnson has clearly eaten into his support. | |
| Michael Gove’s turbulent week sees four points knocked off his total – not all that much, but he had a small rating to begin with: 12 per cent. That none the less saw him second in our last survey: he is now fourth. Jeremy Hunt rises slightly from five per cent to eight per cent, and Sajid Javid does likewise from three per cent to five per cent. | |
| Sajid Javid, the home secretary, has said he was baffled and hurt by his exclusion from the state banquet for Donald Trump during last week’s state visit by the US president. As the Press Association reports, Javid told the Today programme he had still not received a proper explanation as to why was the only senior cabinet minister not to be invited to the dinner at Buckingham Palace. Asked why he was not there, he told the programme: | Sajid Javid, the home secretary, has said he was baffled and hurt by his exclusion from the state banquet for Donald Trump during last week’s state visit by the US president. As the Press Association reports, Javid told the Today programme he had still not received a proper explanation as to why was the only senior cabinet minister not to be invited to the dinner at Buckingham Palace. Asked why he was not there, he told the programme: |
| I don’t know. I have asked. I was just told that normally home secretaries aren’t invited. So I don’t know ... | I don’t know. I have asked. I was just told that normally home secretaries aren’t invited. So I don’t know ... |
| I don’t like it. It is odd. My office did ask No 10 and they said ‘no’. You’d have to ask someone from No 10 why they made that decision. | I don’t like it. It is odd. My office did ask No 10 and they said ‘no’. You’d have to ask someone from No 10 why they made that decision. |
| Previously Javid criticised Trump after he tweeted his support for the right-wing Britain First group. Javid said the president was endorsing the views of “a vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me and people like me”. | Previously Javid criticised Trump after he tweeted his support for the right-wing Britain First group. Javid said the president was endorsing the views of “a vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me and people like me”. |
| Asked on the Today programme if he thought his exclusion was due to his Muslim background, Javid said: “I am not saying that at all. I really don’t know.” | Asked on the Today programme if he thought his exclusion was due to his Muslim background, Javid said: “I am not saying that at all. I really don’t know.” |
| As the BBC’s Ross Hawkins points out, there is precedent for the home secretary being invited to a state banquet. | As the BBC’s Ross Hawkins points out, there is precedent for the home secretary being invited to a state banquet. |
| State banquet in 2017 - Home Secretary of day was invited. pic.twitter.com/8ToruuFmaA | State banquet in 2017 - Home Secretary of day was invited. pic.twitter.com/8ToruuFmaA |
| This is rather bizarre from Jeremy Hunt. | This is rather bizarre from Jeremy Hunt. |
| Woke up this morning and felt a bit like the morning of my wedding. Something big is going to change but don't quite know how it will unfold #HastobeHunt | Woke up this morning and felt a bit like the morning of my wedding. Something big is going to change but don't quite know how it will unfold #HastobeHunt |
| Presumably on the morning of his wedding Hunt was confident that he would be celebrating in the evening .... | Presumably on the morning of his wedding Hunt was confident that he would be celebrating in the evening .... |
| And he was looking forward to spending the day with people he liked and trusted ... | And he was looking forward to spending the day with people he liked and trusted ... |
| And he did not have to worry about the prospect of his day being spoiled by Boris Johnson ... | And he did not have to worry about the prospect of his day being spoiled by Boris Johnson ... |
| Sir Oliver Letwin, the Conservative former cabinet minister who was backing the cross-party attempt yesterday block a no-deal Brexit, has said that parliament had now run out of options for preventing the UK crashing out of the EU, my colleague Matthew Weaver reports. | Sir Oliver Letwin, the Conservative former cabinet minister who was backing the cross-party attempt yesterday block a no-deal Brexit, has said that parliament had now run out of options for preventing the UK crashing out of the EU, my colleague Matthew Weaver reports. |
| Parliament is out of options to stop no-deal Brexit – Oliver Letwin | Parliament is out of options to stop no-deal Brexit – Oliver Letwin |
| There is nothing that excites Westminster more than a leadership election and today we have the first round of voting in the contest to replace Theresa May as Conservative leader and prime minister. The entire election will be a relatively long-drawn out process - we have got several more rounds of voting in Westminster, hustings, TV debates, and the membership ballot to look forward to - but today is going to clarify matters a bit. This is what we will find out. | There is nothing that excites Westminster more than a leadership election and today we have the first round of voting in the contest to replace Theresa May as Conservative leader and prime minister. The entire election will be a relatively long-drawn out process - we have got several more rounds of voting in Westminster, hustings, TV debates, and the membership ballot to look forward to - but today is going to clarify matters a bit. This is what we will find out. |
| 1) Who’s out? There are currently 10 candidates in the race. At least one of them will definitely drop out today - the person with the fewest votes - but under new rules introduced by the Conservative 1922 Committee any candidate with fewer than 17 votes (5% of the parliamentary party) will also be out. Mark Harper, Rory Stewart, Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom all look as though they will struggle to hit this target, and so by the end of the day the field could be down to six. | 1) Who’s out? There are currently 10 candidates in the race. At least one of them will definitely drop out today - the person with the fewest votes - but under new rules introduced by the Conservative 1922 Committee any candidate with fewer than 17 votes (5% of the parliamentary party) will also be out. Mark Harper, Rory Stewart, Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom all look as though they will struggle to hit this target, and so by the end of the day the field could be down to six. |
| 2) Is Boris Johnson as far ahead as everyone thinks? The ConservativeHome website has been keeping a tally of how many MP supporters each MP has and it has Johnson well ahead, on 83, followed by Jeremy Hunt (37), Michael Gove (34), Dominic Raab (23), Sajid Javid (19) and Matthew Hancock (17). But - astonishing as the idea might seem - it is the case that occasionally MPs do not tell the truth about how they will vote in a secret ballot. Yesterday the politics academic Philip Cowley summed it up like this on Twitter. | 2) Is Boris Johnson as far ahead as everyone thinks? The ConservativeHome website has been keeping a tally of how many MP supporters each MP has and it has Johnson well ahead, on 83, followed by Jeremy Hunt (37), Michael Gove (34), Dominic Raab (23), Sajid Javid (19) and Matthew Hancock (17). But - astonishing as the idea might seem - it is the case that occasionally MPs do not tell the truth about how they will vote in a secret ballot. Yesterday the politics academic Philip Cowley summed it up like this on Twitter. |
| If I was a Conservative MP, I'm fairly certain by now I'd have pledged my support to Boris Johnson - because he'll probably win and I want a job - but I doubt I'd actually vote for him.I am a shit, yes, but then the parliamentary party contains a fair few of them. | If I was a Conservative MP, I'm fairly certain by now I'd have pledged my support to Boris Johnson - because he'll probably win and I want a job - but I doubt I'd actually vote for him.I am a shit, yes, but then the parliamentary party contains a fair few of them. |
| Today we will find out if there are sizeable numbers of Tories doing a Cowley. | Today we will find out if there are sizeable numbers of Tories doing a Cowley. |
| 3) Who are Johnson’s main rivals? Hunt looks like the candidate most likely to join Johnson on the final ballot but, according to the ConservativeHome numbers, 75 Tory MPs have not declared for anyone and Hunt is only 20 declared votes ahead of Matthew Hancock. The results being announced at 1pm may well rank candidates in a different order to what people currently expect. Michael Gove and Dominic Raab have been struggling this week, and Sajid Javid seems to have had some last-minute momentum. By the end of today we should have a much better idea as to who might bag the number two slot. | 3) Who are Johnson’s main rivals? Hunt looks like the candidate most likely to join Johnson on the final ballot but, according to the ConservativeHome numbers, 75 Tory MPs have not declared for anyone and Hunt is only 20 declared votes ahead of Matthew Hancock. The results being announced at 1pm may well rank candidates in a different order to what people currently expect. Michael Gove and Dominic Raab have been struggling this week, and Sajid Javid seems to have had some last-minute momentum. By the end of today we should have a much better idea as to who might bag the number two slot. |
| 4) Where will second preference votes start to go? At least one candidate, and perhaps up to four, will be forced out at lunchtime. It is possible that other candidates might pass the 17-vote threshold but decide to drop out anyway. Who will these people support? And where who will their supporters back? (Not always the same thing.) We may start to find out this afternoon. | 4) Where will second preference votes start to go? At least one candidate, and perhaps up to four, will be forced out at lunchtime. It is possible that other candidates might pass the 17-vote threshold but decide to drop out anyway. Who will these people support? And where who will their supporters back? (Not always the same thing.) We may start to find out this afternoon. |
| Here is the agenda for the day. | Here is the agenda for the day. |
| 10am: Voting starts in the first round ballot for the Conservative leadership contest. Conservative MPs vote in a Commons committee room. The poll closes at 12pm. | 10am: Voting starts in the first round ballot for the Conservative leadership contest. Conservative MPs vote in a Commons committee room. The poll closes at 12pm. |
| Around 1pm: The Conservative 1922 Committee announces the results of the first ballot. | Around 1pm: The Conservative 1922 Committee announces the results of the first ballot. |
| 5pm: Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, gives a speech to the Institute for Government. | 5pm: Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, gives a speech to the Institute for Government. |
| As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web, although I will be focusing mostly on the Tory leadership contest and the Commons debate. I plan to post a summary when I wrap up at the end of the day. | As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web, although I will be focusing mostly on the Tory leadership contest and the Commons debate. I plan to post a summary when I wrap up at the end of the day. |
| You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads. | You can read all the latest Guardian politics articles here. Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must-reads. |
| If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow. | If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow. |
| I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone. | I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone. |
| If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. | If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. |