Tories turn on each other as spreadsheet Phil attacks boorish Boris

Sign up to LabourList’s morning email for everything Labour, every weekday morning.

Today is Theresa May’s birthday, but it’s Philip Hammond’s big day on the Conservative conference floor. This morning Tories will hear from the staggeringly incompetent Esther McVey and Chris Grayling, plus the dull Dominic Raab and Greg Clark, as they all take to the main stage before the Chancellor. Spreadsheet Phil is expected to set out how good the, er, essentially no-deal-Brexit-backing Conservatives will be for business. His key promise is to reform the apprenticeships levy.

John McDonnell has hit back at his opposite number’s planned policy announcements, accusing Hammond of “tinkering around the edges” to keep benefits for the wealthy. “The Conservative Conference is now degenerating into farce. Faulty apps, stolen policies, bitter infighting and bizarre announcements like this,” the Shadow Chancellor said.

“This scheme reflects the warped logic of a party beholden to the interests of corporate giants. Rather than tell big businesses to act in a socially responsible manner – or even pay their taxes – the government has resorted to begging and paying their fat cat friends to do what they should have done in the first place.”

Labour has also found that Hammond will cut £2.7bn from the NHS budget over the next term due to a government miscalculation that underestimated public sector pension costs. The opposition says this is the second time departments have been asked to cut spending to cover a pension calculation mistake.

And Labour have pointed out that a number of new Tory conference policy pledges are actually mimics of recent Labour announcements – from workers keeping their tips and a 2030 World Cup bid to a review of the UK’s auditing industry and a foreign buyers’ property levy. The Conservative Party is losing its way, and – as Matthew D’Ancona writes in the Guardian today – its identity is fading too.

That’s what brings us to what everyone is talking about at Tory conference: Boris Johnson. It’s painful to say so, but while the Westminster bubble considers the former Foreign Secretary a busted flush, our posh Donald Trump is unlikely to be thought of as such by the wider British public as they haven’t followed every blow-by-blow account of his manoeuvres. Even more crucially, he is incredibly popular among the Conservative grassroots. Tory members look to Johnson as the man who could restore strength to their party’s image. And frontbenchers are terrified – Hammond’s interview with the Daily Mail, in which he mocks his parliamentary colleague, only shows the weak state of today’s Conservative Party.

Sienna @siennamarla

Sign up to LabourList’s morning email for everything Labour, every weekday morning.