The Tory leadership contest narrows and Labour braces for the Forde report

Four candidates remain in the race to become the next Tory leader. Tom Tugendhat was eliminated in the latest round of voting by Conservative MPs yesterday evening, having come in last place with 31 votes. At the other end of the contest, Rishi Sunak is inching closer to the threshold of 120 votes – the proportion of the parliamentary party needed to make the final two. (It really does sound like a budget version of the X Factor, doesn’t it?)

The former Chancellor received 115 votes last night, up 14 on the previous round. By contrast, Penny Mordaunt lost one backer, suggesting the early hype in the ‘PM for PM’ campaign is fizzling. The trade minister managed to cling on to second place, however, and maintain a notable gap of 11 votes between her and Liz Truss in third. The Foreign Secretary gained seven votes to take her total to 71. A fourth round of voting by Tory MPs will take place this afternoon, with a result announced at 3pm. Kemi Badenoch looks most at risk, having coming in fourth in the most recent round with 58 votes.

Feeling left out of the excitement, Boris Johnson decided to have his own vote – tabling a motion of confidence in his government (after having blocked Labour’s no-confidence motion last week in a considerable break with parliamentary convention). Predictably, the Tories’ large majority meant the motion passed easily. During the debate, Keir Starmer denounced the hypocrisy of Conservative MPs for supporting the Prime Minister after so many of them concluded that he was unfit for office in the mass resignations of recent weeks.

The Labour leader questioned the decision of Tory MPs to leave Johnson “with his hands on the levers of power” for the duration of the eight-week Tory leadership contest after having found him “too untrustworthy for government”. He argued: “Every day they leave him there, every hustings they refuse to distance themselves from his appalling behaviour and every vote they cast today to prop him up is a dereliction of duty.”

The debate provided another opportunity to attack leadership frontrunner Sunak. Starmer pointed out that Sunak had accused Johnson of not conducting government “properly, competently [or] seriously” in his resignation letter but had described the Prime Minister as a “remarkable” man with a “good heart” at his leadership campaign launch. Starmer argued that no one could be “worse placed” to restore trust.

Labour’s ruling body is meeting today. Whether national executive committee (NEC) members will or won’t be presented with the long-awaited Forde report remains somewhat uncertain as rumours have abounded overnight – but it is now thought the report will be put to the NEC and members will decide whether or not it will be published. Those reports alone have caused a bit of consternation as they would seem to go against the inquiry’s terms of reference – specifically that “the report shall be presented to the [NEC] before being made public, and the panel will provide the report in a form suitable for publication, in accordance with applicable law”.

On LabourList this morning, we have a rather punchy piece from Luke Akehurst on why he is standing in the Labour Party’s internal elections. “Whilst the pace of change has surpassed expectations, Labour has still changed far less than it needs to in order to be confident of winning a general election,” he writes. Read the full piece here.