Suella Braverman has been taking the most confrontational and active line so far as remaining Tories begin to wrangle over leadership. At the National Conservatism conference in Washington she described Robert Jenrick as a “big, kind of centrist, Rishi supporter…from the Left of the party”…
Braverman is the only Tory contender speaking at the PopCon inquest via pre-recorded video, saying that the Party needs to own up to the “harsh reality” that it failed to tackle any major issues and instead “rolled out a programme” for Starmer to adopt. Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Frost, David Starkey, Daniel Hannan, and Mark Littlewood have made the case that the Tories are not going to win the next election from the centre and that the party must not hand the keys to leadership back to only MPs. Ejected Rees-Mogg jokes that Tories were neither popular nor Conservative during the doomed campaign…
Lucy Powell on LBC, asked by Tom Swarbrick for her reaction to Labour MP Samantha Niblett’s call for a ‘summer of sex’ debate in Parliament: “I personally don’t own any sex toys, but each to their own… I’m not really sure that’s the right place for it, no.”