It’s fever pitch among the leadership hopefuls at Conference as they desperately try to drum up support. This afternoon the Express threw a drinks reception in partnership with the Common Sense Group to chat with readers and members about their campaigns. Political Editor Sam Lister took the stage, capping off her remarks with, “Without further ado, please welcome Grant Shapps.” But before Shapps could even make it to the stage, someone near the door shouted: “Wait! We have a surprise guest!” Enter Robert Jenrick, running onto the stage to steal the mic…
Jenrick kept it brief—some nods to “common sense” and the Express before imploring the room to “please support and back” him. He then hurried off out. When a bemused Shapps finally got hold of the microphone, he admitted: “I’m not actually backing Jenrick, but it’s great to see four strong candidates in the race.” Meanwhile, Guido is told that Kemi appears to be walking around conference with a microphone, recording every conversation she has, so hacks can’t misrepresent her comments. Only one more day…
UPDATE: Guido is told Kemi’s mics are to get content with members for a video.
Spare a thought for the following 12 cabinet ministers, who lost their seats last night:
- Gillian Keegan – Education Secretary.
- Grant Shapps – Defence Secretary.
- Penny Mordaunt – Commons Leader.
- Alex Chalk – Justice Secretary.
- Lucy Frazer – Culture Secretary.
- David TC Davies – Welsh Secretary.
- Simon Hart – Chief Whip.
- Michelle Donelan – Innovation and Technology Secretary.
- Victoria Prentis – Attorney General.
- Johnny Mercer – Veterans Minister.
- Michael Tomlinson – Illegal Migration Minister.
- Mark Harper – Transport Secretary
A new record…
The Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has lost his seat to Labour. A top Tory officially gone…
Much attention has been given to Grant Shapps’ words this morning to Times Radio, in which he warned, as Sunak did overnight, that Labour shouldn’t be handed a “blank cheque” to do whatever they want. It’s not quite a concession of the election, but it’s close…
“You want to make sure that in this next government, whoever forms it, that there’s a proper system of accountability…you don’t want to have somebody receive a super majority. And in this case, of course, the concern would be that if Keir Starmer were to go into No 10…and that power was in some way unchecked, it would be very bad news for people in this country, a blank cheque approach, allowing to do anything they wanted, particularly when their particular set of plans are so vague.”
Miriam Cates on The Sun’s “Never Mind the Ballots” goes further:
“I do think that we are facing potentially a large Starmer majority… very very large majorities are not good for democracy.“
The messaging strategy has long been planned in CCHQ for otherwise faltering periods of the campaign. Will that be enough to shift the dial?
It looks like Defence Secretary Shapps wanted to digest the results of the MRP poll and Farage’s announcement with Sam Coates from Sky News. Little did he know, he gave Coates a bell while the Deputy Political Editor was live on air discussing the fact that Shapps is predicted by YouGov to lose his seat by a wide margin. He didn’t stay on the line long enough to give a comment…
