The Daily Mail seem determined to block Penny Mourdant from becoming the Conservative Party’s next leader – and therefore the UK’s next Prime Minister – as they target her once again using her previous stance on trans rights.

When Penny Mourdant ran for the Tory leadership last time, she placed third behind Rishi Sunak and the ultimate lettuce loser, Liz Truss.

There are many who believe that Mourdant would have won had the Daily Mail not went out of its way to target her in order to push forward the Boris-supporting Truss.

With another leadership race now underway in the same party, the Mail are doing it again in order to secure victory for Johnson and the same Brexit-supporting, tofu-hating, bigoterati wing of the party.

There are said to be four main candidates this time – Rishi Sunak, Penny Mourdant, Boris Johnson, and Suella Braverman.

Each candidate needs at least 100 votes from Tory MPs before they can be considered. If only one manages to get 100+, they will become leader.

If more than one manages it, they will be put to the Tory membership. Considering it costs just £25 to join the Tory Party, getting two exclusive votes to make someone UK PM is quite the perk. You don’t get that with many Patreon subscriptions.

Despite Truss resigning less than 24 hours ago, the Daily Mail have decided the race is between Sunak and Johnson.

They are throwing their weight behind Johnson, as you can see from how they frame their coverage and the space they’ve given to each candidate in their Friday edition:

BORIS V RISHI: FIGHT FOR SOUL OF THE TORIES As PM quits in ignominy after 44 tumultuous days, it’s set to be... Daily Mail21 Oct 2022By Jason Groves, Harriet Line and David Churchill Allies turned rivals: Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are the favourites to become prime minister BORIS Johnson and Rishi Sunak led the race to succeed Liz Truss last night after she became the shortestserving Prime Minister in history. After a disastrous 44 days in office she quit when party chiefs told her she had lost the confidence of Tory MPs. The Prime Minister, who had abandoned her economic plans in the face of market turmoil, said: ‘I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected.’ Her sudden departure triggered a frantic scramble to find a successor – with party chiefs ruling the contest should be over in a week. Candidates will need the backing of 100 Tory MPs by 2pm on Monday to take part in the contest – five times the threshold set for the last contest. Last night no candidates had formally declared but Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak were racing ahead in terms of nominations – setting up a potential clash between allies turned bitter rivals. A close political ally of the former PM last night said he was ‘rested’, ‘in great spirits’ and ‘itching to take the fight to Keir Starmer’. A close ally of Mr Sunak said there would be a ‘natural logic’ to him facing off against Mr Johnson, adding: ‘It will be a battle for the soul of the party.’ The ex-chancellor last night had 27 declared backers, including former Cabinet ministers Dominic Raab and Simon Hart. Mr Johnson had the public support of 29 MPs, despite having been forced from office just weeks ago. Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt had 13 public backers, while no other potential candidates had any. One senior Tory said: ‘It’s going to be Boris versus Rishi. They’re the only serious candidates in a crisis like this.’ Allies of Mr Sunak were last night reactivating the network that saw him collect 137 nominations in July. Mr Johnson, who is on holiday in the Caribbean and due to fly back to Britain tomorrow, was also taking soundings to establish whether he has the support needed for an extraordinary comeback. His ally said: ‘He thinks there has been a takeover by the Left-wing, liberal faction of the Tory party and that, although the economic situation is difficult, we cannot give in to defeatism.’ The source said Mr Johnson acknowledged he had made ‘mistakes’ and he would now be keen to ‘reach out to talents across the party’, and be a ‘healing, unifying’ leader. ‘He is the proven election winner, a great campaigner and he is the best argument against a general election because he is the person with a mandate from voters,’ the source added. ‘The party needs to decide whether it wants to win the next election or just carry on being a circular firing squad and consign itself to oblivion.’ But MPs opposed to Mr Johnson warned his return would trigger immediate resignations, plunging the party into a series of potentially disastrous by-elections. Health minister Robert Jenrick said: ‘His premiership came to an end for a reason, which is that there were serious questions about competence, credibility, and ethics and does the Conservative Party want to go back to that?’ The jostling for power came as: ■ Suella Braverman, Ben Wallace and Kemi Badenoch were all weighing up whether to launch leadership bids; ■ New Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove ruled themselves out of the contest, as did newly appointed Home Secretary Grant Shapps; ■ Labour called for an immediate election, with leader Sir Keir saying the country deserved ‘ a chance at a fresh start’ after months of chaos; ■ Tory chiefs said Conservative Party members would decide the outcome of the contest in an online vote if MPs put forward more than one candidate; ■ The status of the Budget on October 31 was thrown into doubt, with Treasury sources acknowledging the new PM could cancel the plan to tackle a £40billion hole in the public finances; ■ Tory MPs on the Right of the party warned the next leader against going soft on immigration after No 10 suggested rules could be relaxed to boost growth; ■ Mr Jenrick told the News Agents podcast the Tories faced ‘ extinction’ if they failed to pick a leader they could unite behind; ■ The National Cyber Security Centre contacted the Conservatives to caution that an online ballot of members could be targeted for hacking by a foreign power. ■ Tory MPs warned that Miss Mordaunt’s ‘woke’ views and lack of experience could damage the party’s election prospects. Miss Truss was forced to resign in the wake of a catastrophic 24 hours which saw Government discipline collapse. On Wednesday afternoon she sacked Mrs Braverman as home secretary following a row about immigration – and then had to plead with chief whip Wendy Morton and her deputy Craig Whittaker not to resign after a chaotic vote on fracking. Yesterday morning a slow dripdrip of MPs calling for her to quit was threatening to turn into a flood. North Dorset MP Simon Hoare told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘The unsettling thing is that there isn’t a route plan – it is hand-to-hand fighting on a daytoday basis. Can the ship be turned round? Yes, but there is about 12 hours to do it.’ By late morning Tory shop steward Sir Graham Brady was seen entering Downing Street by a back door to tell the PM time was up. A Tory source said: ‘He told her that she did not have the support to continue and that if she tried to fight a confidence vote she would lose. It was pretty blunt, but it was nothing she hadn’t worked out for herself already.’ After a morning of fevered speculation Miss Truss emerged from the famous black door at 1.30pm to resign, just 44 days after she took power. She will stay on until a new leader is elected next Friday. Her term in office is set to fall months short of the next briefest – that of Tory statesman George Canning, who spent 118 full days as PM in 1827 before dying of TB. Mr Sunak will start the contest as favourite, with allies saying his Treasury experience is vital in an economic crisis. Mr Raab said his former Cabinet colleague had the ‘plan and credibility to restore financial stability, help get inflation down and deliver sustainable tax cuts over time’. But there was a rising clamour among a section of Conservative MPs to ‘bring back Boris’ as the party’s proven election winner. Former party chairman Andrew Stephenson said: ‘During the last leadership contest as party chairman I received countless emails from party members wanting Boris on the ballot. Constitutionally that was impossible. Now it isn’t.’ Peterborough MP Paul Bristow said: ‘We need an election winner and we had an election winner, so as far as I’m concerned I will listen to my constituents, and their message was “bring back Boris”.’ But veteran Tory John Baron said he would ‘find it impossible’ to serve as a Conservative MP under Mr Johnson. He told the BBC ‘more than a few’ backbenchers would give up the party whip. Sir Roger Gale said there should be ‘no possibility’ of the former PM standing until the Partygate inquiry was completed. The first ballot of MPs will be held between 3.30pm and 5.30pm on Monday. If there are three candidates with the required number of nominations the loser will be eliminated. An indicative vote will follow – and then potentially a membership ballot. THERE’S been so little in the papers to cheer us up this week that I wondered what on Earth my wife had found to make her beam from ear to ear at the breakfast table. It turned out she was reading a feature in one of the supplements about a hairdresser in America who charges celebrity clients anything between $3,000 and $10,000 to dye their hair grey (the exact price, apparently, depends on the length of the hair in question). As for why this so tickled Mrs U, that is easily explained. The answer is that a few years ago, she gave up the unequal fight against greying roots, stopped spending a fortune on highlights and dye, and let Mother Nature and Old Father Time take their course. I have to say that the results have been wonderful. I hope I don’t sound ungallant when I recall that in the days when the colour of her hair came out of a bottle in the bathroom, it was a pretty ordinary blonde. Now it’s a gloriously chic shade of grey, which I can only describe as spun platinum, although that hardly begins to capture it. Nor is this merely the desperate flattery of a fond husband, anxious to make amends for forgetting to put the bins out on Wednesday night. Coiffeur Where before she was often congratulated on the luxuriant thickness of her hair, in the past nobody ever said it was a particularly nice colour. Not within my hearing, anyway. Now people constantly compliment her on it — and not only friends, but strangers in the shops, who occasionally stop her to ask if it’s natural or, if not, which brand of dye she uses, so that they can buy it too. Well, as my bank balance will testify, her hair no longer owes anything to artificial colourants of any description. So eat your hearts out, Andie MacDowell, Jane Fonda and all those other A-listers who are apparently willing to make the trek to Tustin, California, where they shell out a small fortune to a coiffeur called Jack Martin in the hope that he’ll make them look a bit like my wife. The only downside is my fear that Mrs U now feels she’s saved me up to $10,000 (call that £8,900) by allowing herself to go grey naturally. So before I know it, she’ll be spending the money she’s ‘saved’ on yet another home improvement project which our house DOES NOT NEED. All right, it’s true that when women (or men, for that matter) stop colouring their hair artificially, there are a few weeks when it looks unattractive before the dye grows out. But as all those celebrities who flock to Mr Martin’s will bear witness, it’s well worth the wait. I’m even prepared to admit that Mr Martin may be justified in charging a lot for his expertise (though perhaps not quite as much as $10,000). Here, I’m relying on the evidence of a dear friend whose hairdresser refused point blank her request for him to dye her hair grey, telling her that it was an impossible colour to get exactly right. All I can say, if my wife’s barnet is any guide, is that if nature is given a little time, she can do an absolutely brilliant job, without any help from the likes of Mr Martin. You know how great artists are able to see a whole spectrum of colours in hair that the rest of us might dismiss as plain black, blonde, brown, auburn, ginger or red? Well, just lately I’ve been trying to cultivate an artist’s eye as I’ve studied the grey hair sported by fellow passengers on the London Underground. (I know. I must kick the habit before I’m arrested as a creepy fetishist.) My conclusion is that E.L. James was onto something when she called her bestseller Fifty Shades Of Grey. By my reckoning, there are quite as many as 50, and maybe more — enough, anyway, to keep paint- chart compilers scratching their heads for an age to come up with names for different shades of iron, silver, mercury, steel, pepper, full moon, squirrel and Caribbean sand. Grizzled Indeed, this has set me wondering just how many women of a certain age, who still colour their hair, may be going through life unaware of the glories that lie beneath the dye. Mind you, I’m not for one moment criticising those who carry on reaching for the L’Oreal bottle, long into middle age. As I’m well aware, career women in particular tend to get a rough deal from systemic ageism in the workplace, where men who turn grey are often described as ‘distinguished-looking’, while grizzled females are too often dismissed as merely past their best. I should also admit that some women who carry on resorting to artifice manage to look stunning, even well into their 80s. (Will I be guilty of ungallantry again if I single out Joan Collins, whose luxuriant dark locks, I’ve sometimes suspected, may not be entirely natural?) All I mean is that those who are debating whether or not to give up the dye may find themselves pleasantly surprised if they do. But then perhaps it’s because I’m fast ageing myself (I’ll be entering my 70th year next month) that I’m coming to think it may often be best to leave nature well alone. Certainly, it breaks my heart to see pretty young women destroying the gift of their good looks, as I see it, by pumping their lips full of hyaluronic acid, for that cartoonish bee-stung look, or having ridiculous silicone balloons surgically implanted in their chests. Oh, why do they do it? Do today’s young men seriously want their girlfriends to look and feel like Barbie dolls? Even in my callow youth, I’m sure I never did. I’m reminded of Percy French’s wonderful lyrics to The Mountains Of Mourne, in which the singer reports from London to his girlfriend back home in Ulster. ‘There’s beautiful girls here, now never you mind / With beautiful shapes nature never designed . . .’ Gracefully But he doesn’t fancy them. Oh, no. As he assures his girl: ‘I’ll wait for the wild rose that’s waiting for me / In the place where the dark Mournes sweep down to the sea.’ At the risk of offending some readers, I should add that I also find tattoos depressingly ugly, on the whole (though I’m well aware that most who have them won’t give a damn what I think). In my youth, only such people as sailors, fairground fortune tellers and Hells Angels went in for them. Now, almost every nicely brought-up middle-class boy and girl seems to have at least one — not to mention the likes of David Beckham, who is fast running out of virgin canvas. Why, oh why do they disfigure their youthful faces and limbs in this way? The worst of it is that a tattoo, paid for in a drunken moment of a gap year, is a sentence for life — unless those who subject themselves to the needle and ink are willing to risk the pain and expense of having it removed later. Ah well, chacun à son goût. I just count myself blessed that unless Mrs U has a surprise up her sleeve, she’ll go to her grave without a tattooist’s mark on her body — and a magnificent crop of spun platinum hair. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll follow her example, put that bottle of dye aside and dare to grow old gracefully. You may well find it a liberation. And if you don’t like the result, you can always go back to the dye. But you never know. You may find strangers staring at you in wonder, as they ask themselves: ‘ Who’s that lady with the $10,000 film-star hair?’
BORIS V RISHI: FIGHT FOR SOUL OF THE TORIES
As PM quits in ignominy after 44 tumultuous days, it’s set to be…
Daily Mail21 Oct 2022By Jason Groves, Harriet Line and David Churchill

It is Johnson’s name that comes first on the front page and it is his face that is centred, above and below.

Boris loyalists: Bring him back Weeks after being forced out of No10, Johnson’s allies say he is ‘itching to take the fight to Starmer’ and re-unite party Daily Mail21 Oct 2022By David Churchill, Jason Groves, Harriet Line and Martin Beckford Backer: Nadine Dorries tweeted her support for ex-PM yesterday ‘Only person elected with a mandate’ CLAMOUR for a Boris Johnson comeback was gathering momentum last night. More than a dozen Tory MPs and peers threw their weight behind Mr Johnson – who only left office six weeks ago – as the best choice to replace Liz Truss. He is understood to be taking soundings from friends, but is said to believe he can turn the Tory party and country around. Mr Johnson, who is currently on holiday in the Caribbean but was last night mulling cutting short his break to fly home to London, believes it to be a matter of the ‘national interest’. According to one ally, he is encouraged by early indications of support from MPs – and some ministers who forced him out are said to be privately calling for his return. If he believes he can make the final round of the race he is likely to run, the source added. Another close political ally of the former prime minister last night told the Daily Mail that Mr Johnson was ‘itching to take the fight to Keir Starmer’. They hailed Mr Johnson as a ‘proven election winner’ and ‘a great campaigner’ and the only potential candidate with a direct mandate from voters. The ally said that if the Tory party was ‘serious about power’ then he was ‘the only choice’. Supporters among Tory MPs argue he is the only potential candidate with a mandate to govern after winning a large Commons majority in 2019, and say this would diminish calls from Labour for a fresh General Election. A YouGov poll earlier this week found that Mr Johnson being handed back the keys to No 10 was the most preferred option among Tory party members if Miss Truss resigned. But many MPs are opposed to him making a comeback because he has an inquiry by the Commons privileges committee over Partygate hanging over him. It is probing whether he deliberately misled Parliament about Downing Street parties during the Covid-19 pandemic – and he could be booted out as an MP were it to find against him, potentially plunging the Tories into fresh chaos. If he won the leadership, Mr Johnson could organise a Commons vote on a motion for the probe to be quashed. If he whipped Tory MPs and won this, the threat would be eliminated. However, the leadership race rules mean candidates will only reach the ballot paper if they get the support of 100 MPs. Several MPs said they don’t believe Mr Johnson will reach the threshold, with one saying the ‘ brutal truth’ is he is likely to get no more than 60. It meant Mr Johnson was being advised by some close friends not to run. But among those supporting a comeback by the ex-PM was former minister and Stevenage MP Stephen McPartland. He said: ‘My inbox is full of people asking for us to bring back Boris. ‘Over 25,000 people backed our mandate in Stevenage in 2019 and I would like to see us deliver it for local people. ‘I am not aware he has made any decisions but they are asking and I am relaying their requests to bring back Boris.’ Andrew Rosindell, MP for Romford, said he was also supporting Mr Johnson. Fellow Tory Paul Bristow said: ‘We need an election winner and we had an election winner, so as far as I’m concerned I will listen to my constituents, and their message was “bring back Boris”.’ Michael Fabricant tweeted: ‘To be clear: he may not be the first choice of MPs (I may be wrong) but he most certainly is amongst the membership. ‘He’s a winner and the only MP with legitimacy having been overwhelmingly elected by the country. Without him calls for a General Election will grow.’ James Duddridge, Tory MP for Rochford and Southend East, posted on Twitter: ‘I hope you enjoyed your holiday boss. Time to come back. Few issues at the office that need addressing. #BringBackBoris.’ Nadine Dorries, one of Mr Johnson’s most loyal allies, tweeted yesterday: ‘One person was elected by the British public with a manifesto and a mandate until January 2025... MPs must demand [the] return of Boris Johnson.’ Former party chairman Andrew Stephenson also appeared to back Mr Johnson, tweeting: ‘During the last leadership contest [this summer] as party chairman I received countless emails from Conservative members wanting Boris on the ballot. Constitutionally that was impossible. Now it isn’t.’ But one ex-Cabinet minister said the Tories need to rebuild credibility with voters, and so it would be wrong for Mr Johnson to come back as PM and then attempt to axe the privileges committee inquiry. ‘It would be like a re-run of Owen Paterson,’ the senior MP said, referring to the disastrous attempt a year ago by Mr Johnson’s administration to spare one of his allies punishment for lobbying. Meanwhile, John Baron said he would ‘find it impossible’ to serve as a Tory MP under Mr Johnson. He told the BBC he believes there could be ‘more than a few’ backbenchers who would give up the party whip. Sir Roger Gale, another opponent, said: ‘We need to remember that Mr Johnson is still under investigation by the privileges committee for potentially misleading the House. Until that investigation is complete and he is found guilty or cleared, there should be no possibility of ‘Advise him to go back to the beach’ him returning to Government.’ Former Cabinet minister David Davis told LBC he was not sure Mr Johnson has enough support among MPs to stand – and said his advice to the holidaying former PM would be to ‘go back to the beach’. Mr Johnson, the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, was forced to resign in July after losing the confidence of his MPs and Cabinet ministers. It came after a series of controversies, including being fined by Scotland Yard for breaching lockdown rules in Downing Street during the pandemic. But it came to a head when his deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher, was accused of groping two men while ‘incredibly drunk’ at the Carlton Club in London. Mr Johnson later admitted knowing about separate allegations of sexual misconduct against Mr Pincher. It sparked the resignation of chancellor Rishi Sunak and other ministers. AND so closes one of the most extraordinary, most turbulent and most dispiriting chapters in Tory political history. After a premiership even shorter than the leadership race that put her there, Liz Truss has resigned. Announcing on her 44th day in office her intention to step down, the Prime Minister now holds the dubious distinction of being the shortest-serving occupant of No 10. Mercifully, the search for her replacement will take only a week, rather than two months. At a time when Britain faces a tidal wave of problems, the public would neither understand nor forgive the self-indulgence of an interminably drawn-out contest. From tackling inflation and the cost of living crisis to fixing the crumbling NHS and thwarting Channel people-smuggling gangs, voters want a leader with a laserlike focus on the daunting challenges ahead – not a country held in political limbo. For almost a decade, Miss Truss had a strong and demonstrable record in a string of Cabinet posts. Sadly though, in Downing Street she was hopelessly out of her depth. Incompetence, unforced errors, selfdelusion, untethered ambition and hubris… that lethal combination meant she’d barely got her feet under the desk before she was turfed back out of the famous black door. The Mail had high hopes when she promised to be a standard-bearer for lowtax, small-state Conservatism and to turbocharge growth – increasing wealth for all. But voters blamed her botched miniBudget – not global events – for bringing turmoil to the financial markets, which saw mortgage and government borrowing costs soar. The fallout saw Labour establish a gaping 30-point lead in the polls. The final nails were hammered into Miss Truss’s political coffin on Wednesday evening, following weeks of U-turns, sackings, a breakdown of discipline and Tory MPs being manhandled in the voting lobbies. In her resignation address outside No 10, there was little in the way of an apology for turning the party of Churchill and Thatcher into a laughing stock – and, worse, for making a Labour landslide at the next election a terrifyingly real prospect. And her bleak legacy doesn’t end there. In a carefully orchestrated coup, the antiBoris, anti-Truss faction – mostly Remainers – within the party have installed their men as Chancellor and Home Secretary. As this paper has said many times, the party made a tragic error in toppling Boris Johnson. For all his flaws, he was unique in modern British politics – a man capable of reaching people who were not of his party through his optimism, energy and vision. Birthday cake during lockdown and failing to get a grip on the Chris Pincher affair seem very small beer indeed in comparison with the economic chaos and political chicanery the country has been plunged into since his departure. If he can be persuaded to stand in the leadership contest, it would send a shiver of fear down Sir Keir Starmer’s spine. Other admirable candidates include Rishi Sunak, who as chancellor saved countless jobs and businesses with his Covid bailouts, and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who has shown his mettle standing shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine in its war against Russia. Penny Mordaunt may also join the race, but there are concerns about the extent of her experience at the top of government compared to the other leading candidates. The Conservative Party is in the last chance saloon. A general election is just over two years away – a brief window in which the Tories must persuade the voters that they are worthy of another term in office. This leadership battle is a final chance for the party to pick a proven winner as leader, unite and stop tearing itself to shreds. Whether it is capable of doing that to survive is, of course, another matter. - Only Johnson can stop Tories turning into a Blairite blancmange Daily Mail21 Oct 2022By Mick Hume WHAT a mess! After ousting Boris Johnson just three months ago in an act of tragic self-harm, the Conservative Party is now in an even worse state than before. Amid economic chaos and polling that indicates near-total wipeout at the next election, the Tories seem unable to present a successor to Liz Truss to unite their warring factions. But there is, of course, one obvious candidate – the only politician in Britain who can claim any sort of mandate to govern the country and calm this turmoil. I am talking about Johnson himself. The Tory Prime Minister who, let me remind you, won a staggering 14million votes less than three years ago. It is time to say what many of those voters will surely be thinking – bring back Boris! I am no Tory loyalist. I have no vested interest in saving the Conservative Party from ruin. But I do want what’s best for Britain and British democracy. Boris is, quite clearly, the only MP with a track record of strong leadership when it comes to big policy issues and the ability to unite his party with an 80-seat majority. He may currently be persona non grata in Westminster salons, but many polls now show Boris to be the overwhelming choice among Conservative members – and many Brits outside the party. That’s because Boris is the only Tory leader with any hope of getting the Government through the terrible mess which lies ahead. And it really would be terrible. In an act of revenge for the EU referendum result, the same Establishment Blob that forced Johnson from office has effectively now staged a Whitehall coup – chasing out Brexiteer ministers such as Suella Braverman, installing arch-Remainer Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor and ousting the hapless Miss Truss, who had, for all her vices, tried to implement what she believed to be a truly Right-wing set of policies. THEY have jettisoned much of the programme on which Boris won the election in December 2019 and, in the process, sucked the Tory Party back into a shapeless Blairite blancmange. That is not the vision of Conservatism that people voted for in 2019 – and they wouldn’t vote for it next time round. Indeed, we would undoubtedly see a landslide for Starmer and his Lefty cabal of chaos, from the illiberal Lib Dems to Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish nationalists. And, piece by piece, everything this country voted for – from getting Brexit properly done, to doing away with identity politics, lowering immigration and driving down taxes – would be dismantled or overturned. We would witness Keir ‘I don’t know what a woman is’ Starmer going back, cap-inhand, to Brussels; untrammelled wokery on the march; the break-up of the Union; and our public finances shot in a way that would make the current situation look relatively stable. We would be left living in an Athenson-Thames economy without the sunshine. The only person who has any chance of stopping all this is Boris. He would, no doubt, face a tough fight – but who else is there? The horrified Establishment will protest. The return of a leader so soon would be unprecedented. But unprecedented times call for extraordinary measures. So, for the sake of Britain – for the sake of democracy itself – we must bring back Boris! Mick Hume is author of Revolting! How The Establishment Are Undermining Democracy And What They’re Afraid Of (Collins)
Boris loyalists: Bring him back
Weeks after being forced out of No10, Johnson’s allies say he is ‘itching to take the fight to Starmer’ and re-unite party
Daily Mail 21 Oct 2022 By David Churchill, Jason Groves, Harriet Line and Martin Beckford
Rishi is ready to run again as allies insist only he can steady Tory ship Daily Mail21 Oct 2022By Harriet Line Deputy Political Editor Look who’s back: Mr Sunak in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, during the leadership battle this summer RISHI Sunak was preparing his leadership bid from his Yorkshire constituency last night after Liz Truss’s departure gave him a second chance to be prime minister. The former chancellor has kept a deliberately low profile since he lost to rival Miss Truss in the final round of the last Tory contest on September 5. But he never fully disbanded his team of supporters and last night allies including ex-education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson were drumming up support for another run. In what appeared to be a coordinated effort, more than 20 Tory MPs publicly declared they were backing him as party leader. Allies, including former foreign secretary Dominic Raab, praised him as the ‘most qualified’ candidate to lead the country through the economic crisis. Mr Raab said Mr Sunak has the ‘plan and credibility’ to ‘restore financial stability’ and ‘unite the Conservatives’ after weeks of turmoil in No10. The former chancellor was in his constituency of Richmond in North Yorkshire yesterday – some 250 miles away from Westminster – when Miss Truss resigned. Mr Sunak, whose resignation from Cabinet triggered Boris Johnson’s downfall, had been the original frontrunner in this summer’s leadership race. But he lost out in the final round amid accusations of backstabbing and a series of gaffes. This included a controversial talk in affluent Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in which he boasted that he had diverted money from ‘deprived urban areas’ to wealthier parts. Mr Sunak is expected to be joined by several colleagues in the upcoming race, who will spend the weekend vying for the support of MPs before nominations close on Monday. Ex-PM Mr Johnson is expected to stand but faces questions over whether he can win the backing of 100 of his colleagues less than two months after leaving office. However allies claim Mr Johnson can ‘honestly say’ he has a mandate for government, and has the ability to ‘turn the tide and avert the disaster of a Labour government’. Penny Mordaunt, the Commons Leader, is also expected to run after coming third in the last contest. Other possible candidates include ex-home secretary Suella Braverman, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and International Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch. Justice Secretary Brandon Lewis could also run with allies saying that he ‘hasn’t made any decisions’ but MPs were ‘turning towards him in a way that we haven’t seen before’. Newly-appointed Home Secretary Grant Shapps ruled himself out of the race, saying: ‘It’s a tremendous privilege to be leading the Home Office in its task of protecting the British people. Government goes on, despite the current political upheavals, and I will remain fully focused on the job as we select the next PM.’ The then- transport secretary pitched himself as ‘Mr Spreadsheet’ during the last leadership contest before withdrawing and throwing his weight behind Mr Sunak. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also said he would not run yesterday, with allies saying he wanted to remain in the Foreign Office. Sources close to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt added that he would not be ‘Credibility to unite the party’ ‘Race is completely wide open’ standing, after he said earlier this week that he, his wife and his children had ruled it out. Allies of former Cabinet minister Michael Gove confirmed he too would not be standing. Tory former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said he thought the race is ‘completely wide open’. ‘If Boris stands then it is like a rock going into a small puddle, it just displaces,’ he said. It came as former Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick warned the party faces possible ‘extinction’. He told The News Agents podcast: ‘This isn’t an ordinary leadership contest. It’s more extraordinary than the one we had in the summer. ‘If we get this wrong, the country will face a very serious period of further instability and the Conservative Party will lose the next general election, potentially cease to exist.’- Bookies make Sunak odds-on favourite... but who’d bet against Boris? Daily Mail21 Oct 2022Andrew Pierce reporting Hats in the ring? From left, Kemi Badenoch, Ben Wallace and Suella Braverman are among those vying for MPs’ support BORIS Johnson’s expected early return to Britain from his Caribbean holiday electrified the race to succeed Liz Truss, who steps down a week today. In order to get his name on the ballot paper he will have to garner the support of 100 of his parliamentary colleagues, a requirement introduced by the Tory 1922 committee designed to keep out the no-hopers. By Monday there will be a maximum of three candidates left competing for the votes of the other 354 Tory MPs. Who are they likely to be? RISHI SUNAK, 42 Former chancellor ODDS: 8/11 APART from one brief intervention in a Commons debate, the candidate who lost out to Liz Truss has taken a Trappist vow of silence since she entered No 10. All requests for interviews in recent weeks have been turned down and he has been holed up in a makeshift office in Portcullis House, across the road from Parliament. The man who won the votes of the highest number of MPs in the last leadership contest goes into this race as the front-runner thanks – at least in part – to his refusal to play to the gallery on tax cuts. His dismissal of Truss’s policies as ‘fairy-tale economics’ now looks extremely prescient. Indeed, in many ways Sunak is a candidate from Central Casting. After graduating with a first from Oxford, privately educated Sunak worked for the blue-chip investment bank Goldman Sachs and had a lucrative career in the finance world. As a former chief secretary to the Treasury and chancellor, his pitch will be that no other candidate is better qualified to calm the febrile financial markets. His opponents argue his wealth – which enables him and his wife to keep homes in London, Yorkshire and California – will make him appear out of touch. In the summer he became the first British MP to appear in the Sunday Times Rich List. His wife Akshata Murty is the daughter of an Indian billionaire and their joint fortune was estimated at £730million. He was also damaged by the revelation that he had kept his US green card until 2021 and that his wife was a non-dom, which meant she did not pay UK tax on her overseas earnings. She was forced to give up the perk to save her husband’s career. Will Boris’s supporters forgive him for resigning and triggering the Cabinet revolt which brought down the blond bombshell? The bookmakers certainly think so –he’s their hot favourite. PENNY MORDAUNT, 49 Leader of the Commons ODDS: 11/4 THE woman who came a surprise third last time behind Sunak and Truss won praise for her dignified role at the meeting of the Accession Council which confirmed Charles as king and for her assured performances in the Commons. But many MPs worry about her lack of time in Cabinet. Before entering Truss’s, she had less than two years of top-level experience having spent just 18 months as international development secretary and 85 days as defence secretary. The only female MP who is a Royal Naval reservist, she is fiercely proud of her military heritage. Her father served in the parachute regiment, she was named after HMS Penelope, a Royal Navy cruiser, and today is MP for Portsmouth North, a constituency in the naval town where she grew up. She raised thousands for armed forces charities by making a controversial appearance in ITV’s reality show Splash! Her back story as a comprehensive-educated child who was the first member of her family to go to university goes down well on the stump but the former equalities minister upset many Tories when she once used the expression ‘pregnant parents’ rather than women. Is she too woke for the job? BORIS JOHNSON, 58 Former prime minister ODDS: 10/3 AS Churchill’s biographer, Johnson will be only too keen to encourage talk of him emulating his political hero – who returned to No 10 in 1951 after losing the 1945 election – by making a comeback. When he quit in July, after a string of controversies – from Partygate to the Chris Pincher scandal – Boris dropped a hint that he might not have given up on politics by referencing the story of Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who left Rome for a bucolic existence on his farm, but was later called upon to take up the reins of power once again. During his final Prime Minister’s Questions, he departed the despatch box with the words ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ and told MPs ‘Mission largely accomplished – for now’. One of the party’s most charismatic and effective campaigners, he won an 80-seat landslide in 2019 – the biggest since Margaret Thatcher in 1987 – pledging to ‘get Brexit done’. He did just that five months later, securing the deal with the EU which had eluded his predecessor Theresa May and he also won praise for Britain’s rapid Covid-19 vaccine rollout. His marginal 7,000 majority in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency is a problem. Labour will throw everything at the constituency. But it’s a brave politician who would bet against Boris. BEN WALLACE, 52 Defence Secretary ODDS: 14/1 DESPITE his popularity with the grassroots, the avuncular Ben Wallace declined to run last time. His marriage had broken down and he was unwilling to expose his three young children to the media spotlight. Unusually for a Cabinet minister he never went to university. After being privately educated at Millfield School in Somerset, he followed in the footsteps of his father – a member of the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards – and attended Sandhurst. As a captain in the Scots Guards in Northern Ireland, Wallace was mentioned in dispatches. He was one of the first european ministers to detect the Russian threat and started arming Kyiv 12 months before the war began. His big disadvantage is his lack of other Cabinet experience. SUELLA BRAVERMAN, 42 Former home secretary ODDS: 33/1 SUELLA Braverman’s resignation as home secretary on Wednesday after just six weeks in the job went a long way towards precipitating the end of the Truss premiership. A standard bearer of the Tory Right, she takes an uncompromising line on immigration and thrilled the Tory faithful at the party conference in Birmingham with her pledge to honour the manifesto commitment to rely on ‘far fewer low-skilled migrants’. To this end, she successfully deported a group of Albanians only last week. The privately educated daughter of migrants from Kenya and Mauritius, she was named after Sue ellen, the character played by Linda Gray in the 1980s TV series Dallas. A Buddhist, she studied at Cambridge and worked as a lawyer before entering politics. She was Mrs May’s attorney general before resigning in protest at the then-PM’s attempts to secure a Brexit deal and is a former chairman of the european Research Group. While she has very little chance of making it to No 10 this time round, she may do enough to ensure she is brought back into the Cabinet in a prominent role. KEMI BADENOCH, 42, International Trade Secretary ODDS: 33/1 HAVING served in the Cabinet for only two months, Kemi Badenoch is a very long shot to make it to Downing Street, but even her rivals acknowledge she is going places – and fast. State- educated, her self- styled ‘anti-woke’, small-government pitch has won her plenty of admirers on the Right of the party. Michael Gove has praised her ‘focus, intellect and no-bulls**t’ approach. Born in London to parents of Nigerian origin, Badenoch grew up in the US. When she returned to Britain aged 16 she worked at McDonald’s while studying at a college in south London. A former software engineer, she once headed digital operations for the centre-Right Spectator magazine so beloved by the Conservative Party members. It would not be the first time a former Spectator employee entered 10 Downing Street as PM. Boris Johnson is a former editor.
Rishi is ready to run again as allies insist only he can steady Tory ship
Daily Mail21 Oct 2022 By Harriet Line Deputy Political Editor

I guess we should be thankful they aren’t backing Braverman, although don’t rule that out in the future if something happens to stop Johnson’s bid or to remove him a second time.

He is due to be investigated by the Privileges Committee in November which looks like it could be very damaging for the former PM as plenty queue up to give evidence over ‘Partygate’.

Should Johnson be found guilty of deliberately misleading the House of Commons, he could be suspended or expelled. Any suspension over 14 calendar days could lead to recall petition in his constituency.

In 2019, Johnson won that seat with 52.6% of the vote. He is expected to lose when it next comes up for election, with Labour taking 55.5% and Johnson dropping to around 27%.

One thing’s for sure, Mourdant’s previous respect for trans people has made her completely unsuitable for the role in the eyes of the Daily Mail and some Tory MPs, none of whom are prepared to put their names beside their statements.

MPs warn over ‘woke’ Penny’s bid for PM Daily Mail21 Oct 2022By Deputy Political Editor TORY MPs have warned colleagues against backing Penny Mordaunt to be Prime Minister due to her lack of experience and stance on trans rights. The Leader of the Commons is widely expected to throw her hat in the ring to replace Liz Truss, after coming third in the previous contest. But MPs cautioned that Miss Mordaunt’s views on trans rights are a ‘massive impediment’ to her ambitions. During the Tory leadership race over the summer, the Portsmouth North MP faced criticism for her ‘woke’ views. But she then came under fire for an apparent change of stance after declaring that trans women – who she had previously said were women – were not. Last night a former Cabinet minister warned: ‘Penny Mordaunt’s views on transgender people are a massive impediment to her ambitions to be Prime Minister. If she were to win the contest, female voters would stay away in droves.’ Another senior Tory said: ‘There’s lots of talk that wherever she goes she leaves a chaotic mess behind her. But I’m also not sure what her views are. I don’t know of any original idea that has ever come to her in the course of her life. ‘I don’t know what makes her tick, and there are definite issues about her trans position that will put a lot of people off.’ A former trade minister with Cabinet experience in the defence and international development briefs, Miss Mordaunt ran to replace Boris Johnson with the campaign name ‘PM Contest: Miss Mordaunt 4 PM’. The Royal Navy Reservist narrowly missed out on a place in the head-to-head phase in which she backed Miss Truss over Rishi Sunak. Yesterday Miss Mordaunt said she planned to ‘keep calm and carry on’ and encouraged others to do the same in the wake of the PM’s resignation. She also told MPs that the country needs ‘stability and calm’ before praising new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. Responding to criticism from Labour, she said: ‘Market functioning has improved, borrowing costs have been lowered and the pound is strengthening... Despite the very volatile global economic conditions, the economy remains resilient.’
MPs warn over ‘woke’ Penny’s bid for PM
Daily Mail21 Oct 2022By Deputy Political Editor

One former cabinet minister (probably Suella Braverman) without evidence told the Mail, “Penny Mordaunt’s views on transgender people are a massive impediment to her ambitions to be Prime Minister. If she were to win the contest, female voters would stay away in droves.”

If the former minister means Mourdant’s current views on trans people, then they are correct, anti-trans views do repel most cis women. I suspect, however, they are referring to Mourdant previously being very clear that “trans women are women”.

Another nameless ‘senior Tory’, peddling hearsay and gossip, added, “There’s lots of talk that wherever she goes she leaves a chaotic mess behind her. But I’m also not sure what her views are. I don’t know of any original idea that has ever come to her in the course of her life.

“I don’t know what makes her tick, and there are definite issues about her trans position that will put a lot of people off.”

Even if I don’t think what the Daily Mail are doing is right I should be clear, I don’t care much for Mourdant at all.

After being generally supportive of trans people throughout her career, she threw us under the bus in order to try and secure the votes of a few bigots. It was a move borne of nothing more than naked ambition and both sides saw it for what it was.

She burned her bridges with the LGBTQIA community but the alien-obsessed loons could never forgive her for being nice about trans people in the first place.

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