It turns out Penny Mordaunt’s effort to run a “clean” campaign that puts an end to “toxic politics” lasted as long as she thought she had a chance of winning. Now that Liz Truss is the bookies’ favourite, and Kemi Badenoch’s voters are up for grabs, the Mordaunt camp has other ideas. This morning, Mordaunt tweeted an Allison Pearson Telegraph article headlined “Tory MPs – vote for Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss today and you’ll murder the party you love”, which went down like a bucket of cold sick with just about everybody. Don’t bother trying to find the tweet – she’s since deleted it…

Meanwhile over in Parliament, Sebastian Payne has this from a Team Mordaunt insider:

“Penny’s been speaking with colleagues already this morning and so many of Tom and Kemi’s backers are calling out for change. Liz Truss will not be able to win a general election and would put MP’s seats at risk.”

Just six hours to go before the result of the fifth ballot…