Tory leadership: The case for and against another ‘disrupter’ prime minister I Adam Boulton
It could be all over on Monday or the Conservatives may be about to mesmerise the nation with another round of vicious infighting.
The Conservative Party rules can’t be changed. They are that Conservative MPs draw up a shortlist of two candidates from their number.
The 180,000 paid-up and unelected party members then choose between them. Less than half of those eligible to vote actually voted for Liz Truss last time but they still overruled the MPs’ preference and saddled the nation with a prime minister who lasted less than 50 days.
Three names emerge in Tory leadership contest – politics latest
Sir Graham Brady and the executive of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers have done what they can to try to stop it happening again by changing the way MPs draw up the shortlist. It is possible that the MPs will present the membership with a fait accompli early next week.
After the bumpy ride for the country and their party under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, senior Tory backbenchers have done what they can to ensure an orderly transition to an orthodox candidate: most likely Rishi Sunak or Penny Mordaunt, who were the runners-up in the last contest which, amazingly, elected Ms Truss less than two months ago.
As things stand, however, there is a chance that these best laid plans could go awry, resulting in Britain ending up with another “disrupter” prime minister drawn from an unrepresentative band of populist libertarians.
How will Tories pick the new PM?
Rishi Sunak lost to Liz Truss in the last Tory leadership contest
The ’22 have set the threshold for nominations high. To enter the contest, a candidate will need to gather written backing from 100 fellow Tory MPs over this weekend. That is five times higher than the 20 required last time and has the desired effect of limiting the field to a maximum of three candidates since there are only 357 Conservatives in the Commons.
Nominations will close at 2pm on Monday. MPs will then vote, with the results declared at 6pm. Theoretically, that may not be necessary. It is possible that only one candidate – Rishi Sunak, the runaway favourite – will get enough nominations. He would then win by a walkover, similiar to the way Gordon Brown took over the premiership from Tony Blair.
Nominating someone is more potent than just voting for them. Remember the charity nominations Margaret Beckett and other “morons”, her words not mine, gave Jeremy Corbyn so he could run. This time MPs might decide that Mr Sunak is going to win anyway, so for a quiet life and possibly currying favour with the new boss they could give him a key to No 10.
But in the final round this summer, Mr Sunak led with 137 votes, to 113 for Ms Truss and 105 for Penny Mordaunt. Ms Mordaunt wants to run again and is scrabbling for her base to nominate her. In polls this summer she was more popular with Tory voters than Mr Sunak. She would prefer a straight fight with Mr Sunak, whether that comes about because only she and he are nominated or because they beat a possible third candidate in an initial vote.
If there are two candidates left for the membership to choose from, there will be an online ballot of the membership next week, with the result declared on Friday. Before that, the ’22 have already said that there will be “an indicative vote” between them first by MPs. The purpose of this is to send a powerful and unambiguous message to the membership about whom MPs want as leader. In choosing Ms Truss last time they went against the MPs’ first preference of Sunak.
If Mr Sunak and Ms Mordaunt are the final two, they could still take the decision out of the membership’s hands by agreeing that one who has least backing from MPs withdraw in favour of the one with most, allowing him or her to become prime minister. They would also both commit in advance to serve in the same cabinet and to keep Jeremy Hunt as chancellor .
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Will Johnson derail the smooth transition?
Such a smooth transition would be derailed if there is a third candidate with 100 nominations.
All eyes are on Boris Johnson, who is said, like Donald Trump, to want a comeback. If, and it is a big if, he gets on to the starting grid, there could be a stampede of MPs who might decide he looks like a vote winner and put him into the second round against either Ms Mordaunt or Mr Sunak.
His chances of victory and re-election by the membership would be very high. He is popular and he is the only candidate who can claim a personal mandate, having led the party to victory in the 2019 general election.
But, but, but.
Tory MPs and cabinet ministers turfed out Mr Johnson this summer for serial dishonesty and sending others out to lie on his behalf. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries and a few diehards may be calling on him to return but he has never been loved by the rank and file of the parliamentary party, who control the nominations. Nor does he fit snuggly with the libertarian, UKIP-style entryists of the European Research Group, who are now fighting a rear-guard action to preserve their influence in the party.
There are obvious efforts by Johnson supporters in parliament and the media to talk him up this weekend. But his shooting star support from some MPs could easily plateau short of 100 nominations. If so, having drawn attention to himself yet again, Mr Johnson would most likely return to his less demanding, more lucrative exertions on the US lecture circuit.
Could an unlikely outsider emerge?
If it is not Mr Johnson, someone else could emerge as the third challenger.
Suella Braverman fancies her chances and her sacking as Ms Truss’s home secretary positions her to rally the right. Kemi Badenoch also has high ambitions.
Fortunately for Ms Mordaunt or Mr Sunak, Jeremy Hunt and Ben Wallace have both ruled themselves out of the race. It is unlikely anyone else would be able to muster 100 nominating signatures.
Shell-shocked Tory MPs do not want to take the risk of taking a punt on another incoherent or incompetent leader. They want a well-known figure with a proven track record to steady the ship.
In the ultimate reckoning, this is likely to count against Ms Mordaunt. At 49, she is older than Mr Sunak, 42, and has been in parliament five years longer, since 2010. But she has served barely two years as a cabinet minister.
Mr Sunak by contrast has three years in cabinet under his belt, two of them as the chancellor who piloted the economy through COVID.
MPs have the future of the nation in their hands. One option would be to open the door to the return of the discredited individual they kicked out a few months ago. Or they could shut him out for good and opt for a technocrat.
Russia has launched a “massive” drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital overnight, after Moscow itself was targeted.
Amid flailing peace talks, the Kremlin’s nightly attacks on Ukraine continued.
Ukraine war – follow the latest updates
A large-scale Russian attack through the night into Sunday injured at least 11 in Kyiv and killed three people in towns surrounding the capital.
There were attacks elsewhere as well, including drone strikes in Mykolaiv, where a residential building was hit.
An apartment building destroyed after a Russian attack in Mykolaiv. Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
‘Massive’ attack
In Kyiv, the city’s administration warned “the night will be difficult”, as people were urged to remain in shelters.
The city’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko described it as a “massive” attack.
He said: “Explosions in the city. Air defence forces are working. The capital is under attack by enemy UAVs. Do not neglect your safety! Stay in shelters!”
It came after at least 15 people were injured in attacks the night prior.
Russia claimed it also faced a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday, and that it intercepted and destroyed around 100 of them near Moscow and across Russia’s central and southern regions.
A municipality worker cleans up after a Russian drone strike on Kyiv. Pic: Reuters
Russia ‘dragging out the war’
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued a prisoner exchange, marking a rare moment of cooperation in the war.
Amid the most recent attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his calls for sanctions on Russia.
Russia “fills each day with horror and murder” and is “simply dragging out the war”, he said.
A resident looks at an apartment building that was damaged in a Russian drone strike. Pic: Reuters
“All of this demands a response – a strong response from the United States, from Europe, and from everyone in the world who wants this war to end,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
Every day “gives new grounds for sanctions against Russia”, he said, and each day without pressure proves the “war will continue”.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is ready for “any form of diplomacy that delivers real results”.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
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Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
World
UN’s Antonio Guterres condemns ‘teaspoon’ of aid allowed into Gaza after dozens die in airstrikes
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
The leaders of the UK, France and Canada are “on the wrong side of humanity and (…) history”, he said, after they threatened “concrete action” against Israel this week if it continues its “egregious” military operations in Gaza.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
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